


Letters on Leadership

by StrayPaper



Category: Mass Effect - All Media Types, Mass Effect Trilogy
Genre: Alphabet Soup Challenge, Canon-Typical Violence, Character Study, Drama, F/M, Fluff and Angst, One Shot Collection, Romance, Sexual Content, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-12-29
Updated: 2019-01-31
Packaged: 2019-02-23 09:04:10
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 17
Words: 52,399
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13186830
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StrayPaper/pseuds/StrayPaper
Summary: "Zaeed dropped his weary bones into the barstool of the port observation lounge and poured himself a large swallow of batarian red-eye.  He’d never been any great fan of batarians, but he’d always been a firm believer that you shouldn’t judge a liquor by its people."A series of shorts focusing on FemShep/Zaeed Massani.Think this pairing is unshippable?  So did I.  But damned if Zaeed hasn't grown on me.WIP, but I think most every chapter will work as a stand alone.





	1. Anarchy

**Author's Note:**

> I'll confess now. Zaeed Massani was never my favorite character in the series. I criminally underused him in my playthroughs. I ship Shakarian 99% of the time. But I stumbled on some great Zaeed stuff by writers like ThreeWhiskeyLunch, Lilith_Morgana, WarGoddess, SorrowfulCheese, and more I'm probably forgetting. And when I got the writing bug for the first time in ten years, all my ideas seemed to center on this grumpy old merc. So I decided to give it a shot.

Madness. Goddamn madness.

He knew it would be the second he got demoted and they put Warner in charge in his place. Warner, who damn near shit himself twice during basic. Warner, who used to let out those tiny little sobs in the darkness of the barracks when he thought no one could hear or see. Zaeed heard, and Zaeed saw. Always pays to be aware of who may have a gun at your back some day, no matter what team they’re presently on.

Warner, who had never known for one moment in his goddamn life what it was like to go hungry, or scared, or hating alone out into the night.

No secret that Warner was only here to prove to Admiral Daddy that one day he’d measure up.

Only he’d never measure. Zaeed had pegged that the first day.

Zaeed wished he’d cottoned to a hell of a lot more than that. He’d never have enlisted.

It sounded alright at first. A bit of adventure, a warm bed and reliable meals always do when you’re sixteen with no prospects and the wrong kind of enemies. And sixteen turns to eighteen easy enough. A quick cash grab from the local mysteria dealers landed him enough credits to buy the right identification. Documents that the dress blues on the recruitment corners weren’t too keen to scrutinize when they were fighting first contact with an alien race made up of nothing but talons and teeth.

He’s not under any illusions that they took him because they saw talent. They took him because they needed meat.

Still, he did have illusions. For one, he’d thought his skills and background would serve him just fine. He knew a good scrap. He didn’t scare easy. He knew his way around guns and knives of all make and model. He’d lasted through the Depression of ‘52, and he’d come out alright. A few scars, seen and unseen, but mostly alright. And at least from what he’d heard about them, the turians would give him a good straight up fight. He liked that idea just fine.

What he didn’t know was how little his skills meant when it came to actual military life.

He didn’t know, for example, how much goddamn ball-busting and politics he’d have to put up with. Blood and guts, he’d expected. Bootlicking was beyond him. And now he’d paid for that mistake. Goddamnit, they’d all paid.

Warner had the right connections, and Warner said “Sir, yes, sir,” to all the right people with no trace of resentment. Warner had a gentle, pretty boy face, and no permanent sneer. Warner had never spit at the feet of a commanding officer he disagreed with. And now they had airdropped on a scouting mission to Canto, a suspected dextro resource moon, and Warner was leading the bloody charge.

Leading. Sure. If that’s the official term for cowering behind a rock while your squad gets picked off piecemeal by land mines and turian snipers. Say what you will about them, but the birds can shoot.

Warner had made no plan for what to do if they encountered resistance straight out of the gate, no matter how many times Zaeed had asked. “No need. It’s routine reconnaissance, and the scanners confirm it’s abandoned.” Then he’d sniffed as if Zaeed were nothing more than lint at his shoulder. And Zaeed had seethed and shifted, but he’d done it quietly. Because that’s what soldiers do, isn’t it? Recognize authority? Hadn’t Zaeed’s open insolence been what put him under Warner’s heel in the first place? Maybe he was worked up for nothing. Maybe it would pay to play it quiet.

That was hours ago. A lifetime ago. In the safety of the ship. Long before the shuttles dropped them into this trap laden hell. The snipers had herded them like cattle, and with no leadership, the fresh-faced Alliance privates panicked just as all dumb animals do.

Now, Zaeed watches the bloody flower form as Vicker’s head blows right in front of him. Bright girl. Wanted to go career. He takes stock of the angle and dodges left behind the parts of what looks like an old mining vehicle. Too little cover here.

“Warner, pull your sorry arse together and flank right.” Zaeed’s the one yelling the orders now, has been for what seems like ages, and he gives fuck-all about proper protocol. All semblance of formality dropped the second they were set upon and Warner clammed up and ran. Zaeed glances back. Can’t see any sign of Warner, but he can see the gobs of vomit leaking from behind that boulder. So much for that plan.

Zaeed has never seen battle before, not against professionals, not like this. But he’s seen enough blood and death not to piss himself over it. So he lays cover for what’s left of his team as they dwindle and turns steely eyes out to evaluate. Should be at least seven turians left clumped by three upper windows of the main facility 70 meters on.

Hicks, Bauman, and Andreas slip to the right, squirming into place behind a fuel container that could blow any second and take them all with it. Hicks has a pistol low on ammo. By Zaeed’s count, Bauman still has five concussion grenades and knows how to use them. And Andreas is a decent shot with that sniper rifle.

But the turians still have the numbers and the high ground. He’ll be flanked eventually if he stays. Forward is the only way onward. Zaeed catches Hicks’ scared eyes across the field and gives the signal to move to a pylon fifty meters hence. He knows the snipers will clip Hicks before he makes it, but the body will give Andreas forward cover. Getting Bauman in close is the only shot they have. Hicks is all blond hair and blue eyes, nodding gratefully at him, just so damned relieved that Zaeed is taking bloody charge.

As soon as Hicks falls, Zaeed signals Andreas to move up. She runs fast as a rabbit and slides into place. Good girl. Together, they lay down fire from both sides now. He takes down one bird. Andreas has hers taking cover. It gives Bauman what he needs to move up and mark the roosts. Time slows a tic. Zaeed watches the glorious arcs as one after the other, three grenades slide home. Hell of an arm, Bauman.

Then time snaps back. The rumble, the noise and flash, it’s damn hard to get used to. No grenades in the gutters back home. But when the shock fades, a victory of silence greets them. Such as it is.

Once they’ve confirmed the facility is clear, Zaeed tells Andreas and Bauman to set up comms and an FOB at the largest building. He’ll go for Warner alone. Andreas catches his eyes as he reaches the door. As if she knows he might just walk out and keep walking. He doesn’t have much voice left, so he just nods a grimace in her direction and turns. Not sure if she takes his meaning. Not sure if he cares.

He finds the First Lieutenant, grey-faced and sweaty behind the same goddamned rock, mumbling how it was an ambush. No shit. How there was nothing they could have done to prepare. Zaeed begs to differ, but he waits to see where this goes. Warner takes to his feet, now, finally. He straightens his collar and straightens his back, and a thinking calm starts settling over his pretty boy face.

He nods, sagely, as if he didn’t have clumps of this morning’s breakfast slipping down his seams. He says he knew Zaeed could do it. Great test of leadership, all part of the plan. He says he’ll put Zaeed up for a promotion. The brass will hear all about it. They’ll give them both medals for this. All the survivors. But especially Zaeed. Zaeed, the first man forward. Zaeed, the hero. This is fine, Warner says. It’ll all work out just fine. Then Warner, with no balls to speak of previously, suddenly finds the knackers to reach out to try and shake Zaeed’s hand.

Warner, who had gone dead silent for the first twenty minutes while Zaeed scrambled over bodies and screamed himself hoarse to give orders over the sound of his own squad exploding. Warner, who would stair-step his career over the backs of all these dead kids and never look back. These, and how many more? If he succeeds, if he bows and scrapes and licks his way all the way up to the top, then how many more will die for it?

Four left. Four out of seventy.  
  
For a chunk of rock no one needs or wants. Just a mark on an old man’s map.

Zaeed returns to the FOB.

“Warner?” Andreas asks, despite certainly hearing those last two shots, the ones that came far too late.

“Birds got him,” Zaeed answers.  
  
Bauman drops his head a little lower, eyes on his fingers as they twitch at the comm. dials, but he doesn’t speak.

“Damn shame,” Andreas says. But there’s a grim smile in her throat when she says it.

Zaeed thinks he can count on them to cover, at least for a little while. They didn’t see anything, after all. Just guesses. But he’d be a fool to think he can avoid court martial forever. An admiral’s son draws attention.

And mostly, he thinks it’s time for a new goddamned plan. The collar of his uniform itches.

He knows a guy who can get him out. Just takes credits and a new name, that’s all. He’s got no problem sinking into a new skin if necessary.

He’ll be branded a deserter. But there’s worse things. And he imagines he’d probably get well acquainted with those worse things if he stayed. Even if they cleared him and promoted him. Hell, especially if they promoted him.

He also thinks quite contentedly that once he gets out, he’ll never take another fucking order or defer to anyone with rank for the rest of his hopefully very long life.

Every man for himself. Goddamn right.

At least in the free world, he’ll never have to pretend otherwise. 


	2. Burdens

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shepard at the Battle of Torfan.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have several chapters written and will be updating as I refine them. Thanks to anybody who gives it a shot. =)

“I mean, what have they got, really? Latest intel shows between fifty and five hundred batarians. Against a whole battalion of the best damned Alliance soldiers anybody’s ever seen.” Shepard laughingly shook her head at Parker over the mess table. He was a good kid. Sandy haired, muscle-bound, clear-eyed, and eager. Maybe a little too eager, but she preferred that to slow any day.

“They’re not even in a real base, right?” Parker went on. “It’s a hut no bigger than 200 meters long. No heavy weapons readings. No defenses. They’ll probably piss themselves and throw down their guns the second they hear my big ass marine boots hit the ground. I say we’re in and out of there in time for more of Fisher’s lousy excuse for breakfast.”

“Keep your chin up, Parker,” Major Kyle smirked as he walked by. “I’m sure if you try hard enough you’ll figure out some chance to be a big hero today, even against those long odds.”

Parker had the sense to duck his head an inch as the Major stalked by, but he recovered fast. “Not much chance of that with Shepard around,” he mumbled. “She always takes the best shots.”

“Maybe I wouldn’t have to if you spent less time primping in the mirror and more time marking your corners.” Shepard fired back with a grin, and Parker laughed.

“Shepard, can you spare a minute?” Major Kyle called her over his shoulder. She hopped up and followed him to the briefing room. As a lieutenant, she wasn’t next in the chain of command. But she’d gotten used to Major Kyle asking for her opinion on missions. Competent and companionable. He wasn’t big on formalities, and he made a constant habit of checking in with anyone who might have something useful to say. Hell, he’d check in just to ask about their days. For Major Kyle, every single crewman mattered.

When he closed the door, his face shuttered. “Parker’s right about one thing. This is too easy.”

Shepard nodded. “No reason to send in a battalion based on the readings I’ve seen. I understand piling on some extra muscle to ensure we recover the colonists, but I heard brass asked for us specifically, and we’re overpowered for a simple snatch and grab like this.”

“They originally planned to deploy a platoon from the Avengent, but Admiral Hackett ordered us instead,” Kyle confirmed, then he pulled up the layout of the Torfan base and stared hard. “Since nobody makes it out of batarian camps alive except for other batarians, at least somebody up top is smart enough to know not to trust our intel.”

“Send in a recon. team first?”

“We can’t risk tipping the slavers off and having them kill all the hostages. If the schematics are wrong, we can’t even pinpoint a safe place to drop in.” Major Kyle gently placed a hard fist on the table.

“Can we afford to wait for more intel?” Shepard asked, even though she knew the answer.

“Where would we get it?” Kyle sighed. “Besides, we’re not just here to get the colonists back. My orders on that are clear enough. We’re here to route the batarians, make a statement loud enough to put the fear of god into all the slaver scum in the Terminus systems. And we have to do it fast. They’re getting bolder every day they go unchecked.”

“So what’s the plan?” Shepard asked.

“We go in quick and prepare for the worst. More men. More heavy weapons. We use full force and expect it in return.” Major Kyle looked at the layout again, winced and shook his head. “But I’ve got to tell you, Shepard, I’ve got a bad feeling about this. Keep an eye out for your squad, and be ready for anything.”

***

There was no way to be ready for this. It’s a hell unlike any she’s ever known.

They enter the empty base, only to find it’s a shell for the maze of black tunnels buried below. Tunnels that will force them to divide their forces, hamstringing any advantage their numbers gave them. Neutralizing their artillery. How can they fire without bringing the whole damn mess down on their heads?

Major Kyle gives the orders to split up through clenched teeth, and Shepard goes down a hole. Her brain scrambles for other options, but none find purchase. No way to know how deep the tunnels go or which ones might lead to the targets and hostages. No time to find out. No way to flush the batarians from their hive without risking the lives of innocents. No way to flee back to the ship with both their lives and their honor intact.

So she takes her squad and goes.

Shepard is coated in oily clay and the stench of rot. The batarians press in through the mud from cubbies and trapdoors no one sees until after they’re too close. Shepard catches one just as he’s about to slit Cho’s throat, but her gun jams with sludge. The batarian slips out faster than Cho’s blood.

She swears she’ll kill them all.

She directs her team to watch the walls just as the bastards start coming through the muck above their heads, beneath their feet. She fights one that drops down on her, hard and breathless, cracking the faceplate of her helmet with a well-placed rifle butt. She digs fingers into his face, scrabbling for his eyes. The batarians aren’t well armored or well-equipped. Just well prepared. He squeals as her fingers find purchase and pain drives him to his knees. He stabs a blade, deep, through a gaping chunk of her armor before she puts him down with a knee to the throat. She grinds all her weight down onto the knee and waits until he stops moving. It seems like it takes hours.

The distraction has cost her. Hamer gives her the update as he drops his own attacker. Three more men down. She spits out muck with her curse, then she feels a grenade go off more than hears it. The slavers are sealing off the routes behind them. Smart. It’s what she would do. But they’re not suicidal. That means the batarians have an exit they’ll be pushing toward now. And if the batarians do, so does she.

The only way out is through. She thinks it over and over before she realizes she’s been yelling it to keep her squad pushing on.

She doesn’t notice the cut splitting her face open until she has to wipe the blood and grit out of her eye. “Guns are unreliable. Get your knives out. They bleed just like we do. They’re moving out, and we’re following. That means the more slavers we kill, the closer we are to fresh air. You read me?”

Parker’s at her shoulder, huffing fear through his open mouth. But he straightens a little. “We read you, ma’am.”

They reach Major Kyle at another intersection, white-faced and wild-eyed. They’re in a hollowed pit with corridors off each end. The sound of controlled blasts behind them tell her the batarians are occupied for the moment. Kyle’s team has fared better than hers, but not by much.

She tells him her plan. They have to buck the flow. Have to pick the path of greatest resistance. Every time. No matter how many they lose. It’s the only way out.

“Three squads down. Batra, Jefferson, Amir. They’re down. My men. They’re my men. We can’t lose anymore. We can’t just leave them here.” His quiet voice is at odds with his jerky movements. Kyle grabs Shepard by the arms as his glassy eyes search each of the marines’ around him, as if they can give him the answers. As if they’re holding out on him somehow. Marines he’s studiously lost to at poker over late nights. Marines whose love and loyalty he tended closer than any garden. She realizes that love went both ways, and it’s killing him. If he lets it, it’ll kill them all.

Parker shifts and lets out a low hum that’s not a whimper. But it’s the sound of a man who’s desperately fighting one off. Shepard can feel panic threading poison hooks into everyone around her.

She forces Kyle to meet her eyes, inches from his face, hoping he can see the answers there, the terrible logic. “Don’t think about the numbers. Look at me. We have to fight through. It’s the only way out. We lead, and we fight through. You get me?”

His eyes clear a second, and he breathes deep. He nods stiffly at her. It’s a C.O. nod. All stiff lip and pure training. “I get you.”

The fist that had been forming deep around her heart loosens a finger.

Then he hands her his gun.

“Shepard, you have command.”

The fist in her chest squeezes closed, and for a second, she can’t breathe. She never imagined wanting to hear those words less. Not now. Not like this. But there’s no time for anything other than acceptance.

She drives them, ruthlessly. Drives them to death after death in dark corners. But she’s learning to see the lines in the ceilings, the floors and walls where the vermin hide. She drags them loose and cuts them down. She feels a darkness peeling the seams away inside her. She knows she’s snarling and smiling now when she makes a kill. She knows it’s scaring the squad. Good. Let them think she’s scarier than any batarian if it keeps them pressing on.

When they finally reach the main hold where the humans are kept, Shepard, Parker and Kyle are the only ones left. They slip in undetected while the last ten batarians huddle around a makeshift detonator arguing over how to fix it. The batarians look unarmed, so confident they wouldn’t be found. But the cages are wired. Whether they’re planning a last-minute hostage standoff just in case, or cleaning up the trash before they flee, Shepard doesn’t know. Doesn’t matter either way.

The human prisoners see them. Elderly and crippled, the ones deemed worthless at the markets. They stay quiet, and she’d like to think it’s loyalty. But deep down, she knows it’s fear. It’s that inborn rabbit panic that leads most people to freeze in the face of the incomprehensible. She’s felt it before. A long time ago.

“Show me your hands and line up against the wall,” Shepard spits as she pulls Kyle’s gun. The batarians look up and seem to sneer in unison.

“Never thought a human’d be smart enough to find us,” one says as he steps forward. “My mistake.”

“It’ll be your last mistake if you take another step,” Shepard tells him. “Against the wall, with all your men.”

Parker catches on. He lifts his gun and tries to keep his aim steady. The batarian reads her, then, and he’s no fool. He tilts his head toward them in angry acknowledgement and moves against the wall with hands raised before signaling the rest of his men to do the same.

“Where’s the exit?” Shepard asks. The lead batarian doesn’t answer, but for a split second, the one beside him cuts all four eyes to a door at the far left of the hall out of instinct. That’s enough.

“We’re getting out of here,” Shepard says over her shoulder. “Kyle, find their comm.’s and alert the Valiant we’re ready for pickup as soon as we nail down our coordinates. Then release the prisoners.”

She waits for an answer, but Major Kyle has gone dumb. His eyes back to glass. “Getting out,” he whispers. “No, we can’t. We’ve left too many behind. They’re still in there.”

“Kyle, get it together, damnit,” she bites out. But he’s already turning, running. “I can’t leave them here. I won’t. I won’t. We have to go back. We have to get them out.” His voice trails him as he’s engulfed in the black of the nearest tunnel.

“Parker, cover the batarians. I’m going for Kyle.”

“Ma’am,” Parker says. But his voice shakes as he does. Shepard glances at Parker then. She takes in the blood and the gore coating him and wonders how much of it is his. She catches the greedy eyes of the batarians. One against ten. How many shots could he get off before they overpower him? Does his gun even work? How long until they start asking themselves those questions?

She gauges Kyle’s pistol in her hands. Looks good. Feels good. She’s done the math. She fires ten shots, and the batarians drop.

“Oh shit. Holy shit. What did you just do?” Parker breathes. “They were prisoners, Shepard. They were unarmed. Oh god. Shepard, what did you do?” He looks over at her, utterly lost.

She snaps a finger in front of his face, pulling his focus, then grabs the collar of his armor and pulls him close. “I’m going to find Kyle and bring him back. Get the comm.’s working and alert the Valiant for pickup, then release the prisoners. Have them help keep your exits covered. And see if you can’t get the damned detonator working. We’re blowing this place to high hell on our way out.”

***

Admiral Hackett tossed the datapad across the tabletop at her in the spartan debrief room at Arcturus station. No salutes and straight to business. She was glad.

She hadn’t spoken to anyone for hours, not since the medbay where they fixed the gouge in her rib and tried to patch her bisected eyebrow. A shamefaced medic had informed her through fearful glances that the cut was down to the bone. Infection set in so fast. Too long without medi-gel. There’ll be a scar. He was so very sorry. As if her face meant something to her.

It was the only other contact she’d had since the transport lifted her off that godforsaken rock and Captain Anderson told her they were taking her straight to Arcturus. He saluted her and ordered her to file her report immediately. He didn’t offer any condolences. No claps on the back or welcome homes.

Shepard clung to his sternness like a life-raft. She thought the slightest show of kindness, of sympathy, might succeed where six hours in a batarian mudhole had failed. She thought of the black, broken pit of Kyle’s eyes and shuddered. She fired off her action report, maybe two paragraphs long. What was there to say, really? The reality beggared description. And then she waited.

Now she was being debriefed personally by the Admiral of the Fifth Fleet. She’d never met the admiral face to face. Hell, she’d never met any admiral face to face. She couldn’t imagine this was a good time to start.

“Parker’s report,” Hackett said as he pointed at the datapad in front of her. “You can read it first if you want before you answer any of my questions.”

“Is that standard protocol?” Shepard couldn’t help asking. She raised her eyebrows while she stared down, her hands clasped carefully on the table in front of her.

“It is today,” Hackett said, with a hint of something less than granite in his voice. She looked up and found him exactly as advertised. Gray hair. Steel eyes. God, he looked like he’d just marched out of a recruitment vid.

“You had to watch your entire battalion fall,” he continued blandly, as if he were reading off a duty roster. “Major Kyle’s still under medical observation from whatever the hell you had to do to him to drag him off that rock. Private Parker and the hostages are safe. And there’s not a single batarian left breathing on Torfan. So today, I think you deserve a little more than standard protocol.”

“No need to read it. Parker’s solid. I’m pretty sure whatever he wrote in there is accurate.”

“Accurate, maybe,” Hackett agreed as pulled out the metal chair across from her and sat down. “But there’s a difference between accuracy and truth, Lieutenant. And truth comes from hearing all sides.” Shepard felt him staring, hard intent boring down on her shoulders. His bearing was impressive, but she had learned the hard way that carrying yourself well in a uniform means almost nothing. Major Kyle was the picture of a perfect soldier, and he still broke. She wondered what her own bearing would say about her after this, and whether it would be true.

“Why did you go back for Major Kyle?”

“Excuse me?” Shepard couldn’t help it. The sudden intrusion into her thoughts made her face go slack.

“Something else you’d rather talk about, Lieutenant?”

“Everything I did. My squad. The batarians…” Shepard started. But she didn’t know how to finish that. Couldn’t even work up any shame in it.

“I’m being court martialed because I went back for Major Kyle?” Shepard didn’t try to hide her disbelief.

“You’re not being court martialed at all, Lieutenant. Major Kyle is. Or he will be, if the psych. eval. ever clears him for it. At this point, I think the chances of that are slim.” Hackett folded his arms across his chest and leaned back in his chair. She suspected he was trying to look more casual, but the pose looked so uncomfortably civilian on him that it had the opposite effect. “But now that we’re talking about it, what, exactly, do you think you should be court martialed for?”

Shepard recognized all the hallmarks of a trap, but she couldn’t help herself. She’d already resolved that she wouldn’t hide the truth no matter what it cost her. She could never live in any other skin but her own.

“Major Kyle was my commanding officer, sir. He ordered a retreat to search and rescue any possible survivors in the tunnels. I countermanded him and ordered Parker to stay behind with the batarians. Then I changed my mind, and I executed them. All of them.” Shepard was determined to meet his gaze at that. “Parker didn’t have time to stop me,” she added. “I acted alone.”

Hackett pressed his lips into a thin line before holding up a finger. “Number one, Major Kyle had already relinquished command to you when he realized he was unfit for duty, so you didn’t countermand anything. Number two, there’s no way in hell Parker would have been able to hold those batarians alone, and you know it. And number three, you show me ten dead batarian slavers in exchange for saving one of ours, and I’ll call it a good trade without losing any sleep over it. You understand me, Lieutenant?”

“Yes, sir,” Shepard said quietly, but she fingered the edge of her crew uniform collar.

“You put the batarians down so hard, they’ll think twice before their next raid on our colonies. More importantly, you didn’t do a damn thing worth being court martialed over. You’re smart enough to know that, logically. So, the real heart of the matter is, why do you feel like you should be?”

Shepard searched for the right answer, the true one. She didn’t know how to explain how many hundreds of ways she’d played it out in her head looking for the part that she must have missed, the key piece that would have led them to an honorable victory here. There had to have been one. And she thought if she lived another thousand years, she’d never stop turning it over, looking for that lost path. But she didn’t know how to explain any of that. So she settled for, “It all went to hell, sir.”

“And you think that’s your fault?”

“I think it’s my responsibility.”

“Hmph.” Hacket leaned forward, right angle arms across the table, in military mode again, but it made her feel easier all the same. “Listen to a lesson from an old man, alright? Sometimes, you fail because someone else screwed up, and you learn from their mistakes. Sometimes, you fail because you screwed up, and you learn from your own. And sometimes you just fail because everything goes to shit. And it doesn’t matter how smart, or how fast you are, or how hard you train. Doesn’t matter if you cared more, or how righteous the cause is. Things just go to shit. And sometimes that’s the worst lesson. Because there’s not a damn thing you or anyone else can do about it but accept it and move the hell on.”

“I’ll work on that, sir.”

If he heard the skepticism in her tone, he ignored it. “Damn straight you will. You did everything right, Lieutenant. Maybe you’re looking for something more, but sometimes that’s all the lesson you get. You just move the hell on.” He tapped the table with scarred finger. “You never really answered my question about Kyle.”

Shepard considered for a moment before letting the words, “Leave no man behind,” slide out of her throat. It was good and right and exactly what she was supposed to say. But she felt ice crawling in her belly. She left plenty of men behind. Hundreds. Left their bodies to rot in a black hell and sealed the gates behind her.

“Sounds good in theory,” Hackett said, reading her too well. “In fact, that’s exactly what Major Kyle has been saying ever since they put him in a padded room. So why don’t you tell me why you’re sitting here having a conversation with me and he’s sitting in there beating his head against a wall?”

“He was trying to save the dead,” Shepard breathed. “I was trying to save the living.”

“The mission, and the lives of your squad, Lieutenant,” Hackett said. “You never lost sight of that.”

“What happens from here?” Shepard asked.

“I’m not going to lie to you. It’s not going to go away. The Alliance needed this victory. They won’t let anyone forget it. You’ll be in line for a promotion. Worse than that, you’ll be known for this. They’ll want you known for it. For a long, long time.”

“For the worst day of my career,” Shepard said, hating how pathetic and self-pitying it sounded to her ears.

Hackett didn’t budge. “The mission, and your men, Lieutenant. That’s what you got right. And you’ll keep getting it right. You remember that, and no matter what they say about you, no matter how high you rise, you’ll do just fine.” He left the room without another word.

And even though Shepard barely knew Hackett, she thought she’d owe him for the rest of her life. Because for the first time since she left Torfan, the fingers on her heart eased, the smallest fraction. 


	3. Confirmation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Garrus and Zaeed have a chat after Zorya.

Zaeed dropped his weary bones into the barstool of the port observation lounge and poured himself a large swallow of batarian red-eye. He’d never been any great fan of batarians, but he’d always been a firm believer that you shouldn’t judge a liquor by its people. He heard the slide of the door behind him and glanced over his shoulder to see Vakarian stride in. Guess he’s not the only one who needed a drink after that little disaster on Zorya.

Zaeed felt a brief wash of relief. He didn’t drink alone often, not after he’d let the bottle swallow him down and then crawled out of it years ago. He kept to his limits better when he knew others were watching. Through the thick and thin of it, pride had always been his most reliable sponsor.

But damned if he didn’t need a drink right now. Twenty years. Wasted. Vido was onto him and back in the wind. Kidnapping and slaving his way through the galaxy with impunity. Zaeed knocked back his tumbler and poured himself another.

Vakarian shifted in his armor. When Zaeed turned again, he was pinned with a black gaze.

Oh, not a social call then.

“Massani.”

“Vakarian.”

Zaeed held up the bottle and Vakarian shook his head once before moving closer and taking the seat to his right.

“I was betrayed on Omega,” Vakarian offered quietly. Zaeed wasn’t sure what prompted the sudden confession, but he heard the rage skimming around the undertones clear enough.

“Figured,” Zaeed said carefully. “You were too good for too long to cock it all up with a stupid mistake.”

“Trusting the wrong person was my stupid mistake,” Garrus corrected him. “And it’s one I don’t intend to make again.” The words settled in the air between them.

“I see.” Zaeed took a swallow. He felt his pistol sitting heavy on his hip. Ordinarily, he would be going for his gun after a statement like that, but this was no ordinary mission. Shepard’s was no ordinary ship. And ordinarily, Zaeed wouldn’t be the one in the wrong.

“I heard what you told Shepard about Vido.” Vakarian paused, grimly. “The man who betrayed me and my squad escaped too. I’m still looking for him. So, I know what it’s like to want that kind of revenge, to need it.”

Vakarian picked up a dextro bottle of his own and stared at it before going on. “Shepard is different. She doesn’t hold grudges, not like that. It’s harder for her to understand.” He gently set the bottle down. “And Shepard’s decided to give you a fresh start, so that’s good enough for me.”

Zaeed heard the other meaning in that last line as well. That just about anything Shepard said or did would always be good enough for Vakarian.

Vakarian tapped idly at the bar with one thick gloved claw. “We’re on the same team here. That means I’ll have your back on the ground or otherwise. But I want you to remember,” he rasped with low intent, “I’m not Shepard. And if you ever point another gun at her, spent thermal clip or otherwise, you won’t live long enough to pull the trigger.”

Zaeed respected that Vakarian came at him like this, clearing the air before it had a chance to fester. Smart. And unlike a lot of brash talk he’d heard down the years, he knew this threat was solid. Vakarian lacked Zaeed’s stamina, but he was quicker than Zaeed and a hell of a shot. If Vakarian ever wanted Zaeed dead, this was the only warning he was going to get.

Zaeed didn’t have to think long or hard about the deal on the table. He’d already agreed to it, hadn’t he? There on that tarmac as he strained under that goddamn pylon. He knew how it must have looked to Vakarian though, and Shepard too, for that matter. Acquiescence in the face of sudden death doesn’t hold much water.

The problem was, he didn’t know either of them well enough to explain why his snap decision wasn’t so snap after all. It was around twenty-five years in the making. Deciding to go all in with Shepard had nothing to do with the feel of his ribs cracking or the thought of her gun blowing off the good side of his face. Well, almost nothing.

It was Warner. Because for a second, Zaeed was standing in Shepard’s boots, looking down the barrel at himself. How petty and despicable he must have seemed, putting his own wants and needs ahead of the lives of the team while the refinery and the whole goddamn galaxy burned down around them. And instead of shooting him, as she damn well should have, she had offered him a way out.

When he had stared up at her face, cold stone and hard angles, but so determined to save everyone, even save him if he’d let her, he was dumbstruck. Christ. She was pure will.

But, of course he couldn’t tell Vakarian that. So instead, he smiled wryly in the face of Vakarian’s threat, said, “I’ll drink to that,” and then raised his glass and waited. Terms accepted.

Vakarian seemed satisfied, poured his own glass of whatever swill they had for turians on this ship, and downed it with a nod.

“You’ve been with her from the first, haven’t you?” Zaeed found himself asking.

Vakarian side-eyed him before relaxing a bit. “I was there on the SR-1, when she stopped Saren.”

“Bet watching her take that bastard down was a hell of a sight,” Zaeed said and grinned despite himself.

“You have no idea.” Vakarian smiled back. “She’d already talked Saren into committing suicide, right there in the council chambers, which was unbelievable enough. But then she told Alenko and I to go down and check the body. We were confident he wasn’t going anywhere. Hard to live through a headshot. But I shot him again for good measure.”

“Smart move. Alenko was the pretty boy, right?”

“I won’t pretend to have any idea what humans classify as pretty. But there was certainly a lot of giggling and staring whenever he walked into a room,” Garrus allowed.

“Fair enough,” Zaeed chuckled.

“Anyway, Shepard was still up top then, until the floor started to shake out from beneath her. Then we were all knocked back at ground level when this red light zapped Saren, and he came back to life. Only it wasn’t really Saren anymore. It was a glowing nightmare full of reaper tech.”

“Like husks?”

“But worse,” Garrus agreed, warming to the story. Zaeed figured it wasn’t often that Garrus got to tell his tales to someone who might halfway believe them. Zaeed knew the feeling.

“Saren came back twice as big and at least five times as fast as he had been. Alenko and I were still staggering to our feet when Shepard rounded on him, laying down cover fire while I sited my rifle and Alenko fired up his biotics. I can’t tell you how many times I thought we were dead. But Shepard kept dodging and rolling, shooting and shouting out commands. She beat him down right before a piece of Sovereign fell through the ceiling and half of the building came down around our heads.”

“What’d you do then?” Zaeed leaned toward Vakarian with an elbow on the bar. He had never heard anything but the most sanitized versions of this fight.

“We got separated. Alenko and I limped our way out of the debris, but Shepard was nowhere to be seen. Alenko was sure she didn’t make it. You could just tell. But I wasn’t quite sold. I’d seen her survive the geth and the rachni. I couldn’t believe a little ceiling tile would finish the job.”

Zaeed huffed a small laugh as he and Vakarian downed another drink together.

“I heard the pile of rubble move before I saw her. Then she topped the wreckage, arm broken, but proud, with the whole damn council room in flames behind her. I’d never seen anything like it. It was amazing.” Garrus’s eyes glowed at the memory.

“Ah,” Zaeed managed. “So, you and her…”

“We what?” Vakarian asked.

“You know.” Zaeed waved his freshly filled glass around in a small circle.

“I really don’t.” Vakarian looked as baffled as a turian can.

Zaeed rubbed the back of his neck with his left hand. “So, the two of you are a thing. Relationship. You know.” He tipped his glass at Garrus. “Don’t worry about me spreading it around. No one’s business but your own, far as I’m concerned.”

Garrus stared at him as if Zaeed had just suggested he join a vorcha Christmas choir. “You think the commander and I,” he trailed away, flummoxed.

“Well, yeah, why wouldn’t you? She’s a hell of a woman. And the two of you are damn near inseparable far as I can tell.”

“But. She’s human,” Garrus said. “And she’s my best friend.” As if that obviously precluded every other possibility. And hell, maybe for Garrus, it did.

“Never been attracted to our kind, then?”

“I can’t say that I have.”

Well, that explained it. It wasn’t worth it to the turian to see if Shepard might be the exception to the rule, not if it risked the friendship. Made sense, he guessed. He doubted Garrus Vakarian had many friends left after Omega. “But if she asked…”

“I’m pretty sure I’m not her type.”

“Oh, and what’s her type then?” Zaeed let slip, wondering why the hell it mattered.

If Garrus took any special note of the question, he didn’t let on. “Not anyone she’d have to convince,” Vakarian said. “At least, not anyone on the crew,” he amended.

“Everything by the book, then, eh?”

“You have met Shepard, right? About so high?” Vakarian held up his hand. “Employs aging mercenaries and turian vigilantes? Stole an Alliance flagship? You might have noticed her walking around in a Cerberus uniform. Is any of this sounding familiar?” He knocked back a drink and smirked.

“I just meant, I’m pretty sure there was plenty of shipboard company around for the taking if she wanted it. I saw the vids like everyone else. Looked like the pretty boy was head over heels, if her memorial service was anything to go by. Not to mention the asari.”

Garrus’s face drew shut for a moment, and Zaeed wished he could walk it back. Considering how the conversation started, probably not the best time to go dredging up bad memories and prying about in Shepard’s personal affairs.

And there was no reason to follow this trail anyway. Not like he’d ever have a chance with a woman like her. Not like he’d want to. Stubborn bitch probably had bigger balls that he did. Barely a woman at all. Machine, more like, if the rumors were true.

But, still. One hell of a machine. He’d be lying if he pretended revenge and a fat paycheck were the only reasons he took this job. He’d done his homework. Shepard was the only reason he’d believed this suicide mission might not be strictly suicidal.

And, he had to admit, she had something. Something about her face in all those shitty Al-Jilani interviews and post-death retrospectives pulled at him, some bone-deep competent loneliness glimpsed in the set lines of her shoulders and tight draw of her mouth.

He’d met god knows how many soldiers, good and bad, over the years. But few were willing to take on truly impossible odds without being ordered to. Fewer still were willing to buck the system to spend and save lives as necessary.

Hell, she’d come back from the bloody dead still fighting, even after the toll it had taken. Now, seeing her in action, being one of hers, it sparked some buried, sharp ache in him. Like mid-morning light smack in the face after a long, drunken sleep.

“The commander may not care much about the regs, but Alenko was as straight-laced as they come,” Garrus explained, pulling him away from his thoughts.

What Vakarian had been getting at finally clicked home. It’s one thing to fraternize. But it's a lot murkier to proposition someone when they’re under your command. So even if Shepard fancied the strapping lieutenant, or the asari, or Vakarian himself for that matter, she wouldn’t have pushed. The uncomfortable niggling respect he’d been nursing for her grew a bit more.

“Don’t know if she has a thing for scars though,” Garrus tossed out, scratching one side of his mandible. “She never really said.”

Zaeed started coughing around a mouthful of drink. “Went down the wrong pipe,” he muttered.

“I’m sure.”

Sly turian bastard.

***

Two hours and too many drinks later, Garrus leaned heavily on the captain’s cabin doorframe to give his report.

“Successful interrogation, I take it?” Shepard asked with a subdued smile as she tilted back in her desk chair to take him in.

“Successful enough,” Garrus drawled slowly. “Though I may request a later shift in tomorrow’s duty roster while I sleep this one off.”

“Request denied,” Shepard happily supplied.  
  
“Slave driver.”

“Pulling double duty is one of the overlooked perils of being the captain’s best friend,” she reminded him. “Besides, you’re not half as drunk as you’re pretending to be anyway. Fake drinking?”

“Fake liquor,” Garrus corrected. “Comes in handy when the newcomers think they can beat me at cards.”

“Good thing I’m not a newcomer then.”

“Oh, well, it was worth a try.” Garrus straightened and sighed, now visibly sober. “You did send the best, you know.”

“And? Don’t keep me in suspense.” Shepard waved a hand. “What is The Best’s professional opinion?”

“I don’t think you have anything to worry about there, Shepard,” Garrus said easily. “Massani’s yours.”


	4. Denial

He can’t wrap his head round it, it hits him so fast. Always does these days. One second, he’s sitting in the mess hall talking scope mods with Vakarian, and the next his palms are itching, and his throat goes dry as a bone. All she did was clap a hand on his shoulder, all casual comradery, and sweet as you please he’s fourteen again.

He’s not sure exactly when it started, this unfortunate focus. After Zorya, obviously. But before it, too, somehow. Like when they saved Archangel, the first time she did that biotic charge. He’d never seen anything like it. And yeah, maybe it got him a bit hard. She’s taking him on missions more often now, trading him out with Vakarian. More opportunities to see her in action, more contact. So when he feels fire licking in his guts as she butts a krogan in the face with a shotgun or pulls a geth like a ragdoll, it’s easy enough to explain. Battle lust. It’s natural. He’s felt it before. Nothing wrong with it.

Shepard lifts her hand as she moves past to sit at the empty spot on Zaeed’s right, but the place where his pauldron shifted still sits warmer just from the impact of her touch. He feels a flush creeping up the back of his neck and hopes it doesn’t crest the collar of his under armor. Vakarian’s stopped talking now, and Zaeed knows he should answer, but damned if all he can think about isn’t Shepard’s firm legs sliding into place on the seat beside him. This, this fumbling in place at a simple fucking touch, this isn’t battle lust. It’s something else.

“So? What do you think?” Vakarian turns keen eyes on him and waits for him to pick up the thread of conversation.

“Well, it’s always more about the man than the machine in the end, isn’t it?” Zaeed spouts. There. That should be vague enough to cover just about anything. Vakarian doesn’t look sold. He’ll always be a bloody copper deep down.

But Shepard shrugs a shoulder at Garrus and says, “Try telling that to the guy who got his face blown off with a rocket.”

Garrus huffs good-naturedly. “I’ll have you know, I won that round, as far as I’m concerned, Shepard. The gunship didn’t live to see another day.” Then Shepard laughs.

Zaeed loves the sound of her laugh. He ducks his chin to hide his smile at the first ring of it. Her real ones are warm and low, and they make you feel like you caught her out in a secret she didn’t expect to tell.

He’s too goddamn old for this. He knows that. But knowing it means fuck all in terms of stopping it. In fact, if he’s honest, it’s been getting worse. This constant awareness. Every little look and insignificant touch she sends his way gives his heart a race.

He just needs a woman. That’s all. He’s spent more quality time with Shepard than he has with any female in years. Any port in a storm, and all that. And he can’t remember the last time he had a good lay.

No, that’s a lie. Her name was Lynne. Pretty little dancer in a backwater hole in the Verge. Blonde hair, blue eyes, and big bouncy tits he spent three days buried in. Three days before the high-pitched squeaks, prissier than thou attitude and flimsy grasp of even the most basic concepts of galactic politics got on his last damn nerve.

It’s not a good story, so he never tells it. No terrorist attacks or middle of the night murders, no double crosses. Just a tired merc’s small epiphany. That a warm and willing woman still left him cold when there was nothing deeper behind it. And he didn’t want to look for something deeper, not after A’rana sold him out to the Blood Pack. So, when the occasional opportunity for something fast and easy came up, he just didn’t take it. Didn’t feel like such a big change at the time.

He still had needs. He’d take care of himself in a bunk or a berth or the shower of whatever freighter or cheap hotel he’d holed up in. And he still noticed the pretty ones. Can’t help looking. Just stopped looking with intent, he guesses.

He hadn’t realized it would affect him as much as it has. But if his heart’s leaping like a love-struck teenager every time the commander walks into the room, he’s well past time to do something about it.

Easy enough to remedy at least. He’s never had much trouble finding a woman when he wants one. The scars put off most of the highborn sort, but the highborn sort don’t generally frequent the establishments he does anyway. Besides, confidence covers a multitude of flaws. Pick the right type, show a little respectful interest, and if it doesn’t work out, then no hard feelings, and move on to the next. It’s a numbers game as much as anything.

They’ve got a layover coming up on Omega. He’ll scratch his itch and be done with it. Mind made up, he takes his leave of Shepard and Garrus. Food half eaten. But he can tell he’s outstayed his welcome. Goddamn turian’s too clever by half.  
  
***

“So,” Garrus started. “When are we gonna talk about that?”

Shepard lifted a fork to her mouth, finished a bite and asked, “When are we gonna talk about what?”

“Your secret admirer.”

Shepard’s eyebrows drew together as she lowered her fork. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

Garrus inclined his head back toward Zaeed’s departing form across the room. “Really,” he drawled. “You’re telling me you haven’t noticed.”

“I noticed he left before his tray was empty. That’s about as far as my attention span goes these days. Sorry to disappoint you, Garrus.”

“I think he likes you.”

Shepard let out a laugh. “And you deduced all that from a half empty tray?”

“No, no, it’s not just that,” Garrus said. “Something’s changed since Zorya. He’s always finding ways to talk about you, asking questions. And he looks at you funny when you’re not looking.”

“So now you’re an expert on human facial expressions,” Shepard snorted as she eyed him.

“Hate to disappoint you, Shepard, but humans commit just as many crimes on the Citadel as anyone else. I’m not quite as oblivious to your wiggly little human faces as you think.”

“Sure, something’s changed,” Shepard replied easily. “I punched him in the face.”

Garrus chuckled. “Well, that’s just it. For a ruthless bounty hunter like him, isn’t that, what do you call it? First base?”

“I pointed a gun at his head,” she reminded him.

“I don’t even want to guess what base that is.”

“Funny,” Shepard said drily, as she dug around the remains of her rehydrated steak and potatoes. “Whatever it is, it doesn’t mean anything. I don’t think a man like Zaeed Massani ever gets stuck on anyone for too long. Seems more like a ‘woman in every port’ type of guy to me. Hell, maybe a hanar in every port, for all I know. I’m not one to judge.”

“If you say so. I’m man enough to admit I could be wrong. But what if I’m not?”

“Then I guess I do what I always do, Garrus. Cross that bridge when I come to it.”

“Alright,” Garrus answered with a grin.

“Well, you let that one go pretty easy.”

“Oh, I’m on to a new mystery now, Shepard.”

“Which is?”

“Why you’ve been pretending not to notice in the first place.”

“Not much of a mystery there.” Shepard stabbed a potato chunk and waved it at him. “I told you. There’s nothing to notice.”

“Oh, please. You’ve never had any problems noticing before. Let’s see,” Garrus put his own utensils down and started counting off on his fingers. “Alenko, Sha’ira, Liara, Chambers…”

“Stop. Oh, God, just stop. You swore if I told you about Chambers that you’d never bring it up again.”

“We were both very drunk, Shepard. I’m pretty sure that oath would never hold up in court.”

“I’m the only one on this ship with the power to revoke your calibration privileges, you know.”

“That hurts. I’m just saying, you’re used to drawing a certain type of attention. It’s a pattern. You notice, you politely shut it down, and then I tease you ruthlessly about it. If you’re pretending not to notice it now, there has to be a good reason.”

“Garrus, I promise you. If Zaeed suddenly declares his undying love for me, you’ll be the first to know.”

“The real question is, what are you going to say to him if he does?” Shepard stared wide-eyed for a half second too long, then put on an exaggerated scowl. She dumped her tray loudly and walked out to Garrus’s self-satisfied laugh.

***

She’s been giving him glances for almost twenty minutes before he decides to bite the bullet, buy her a drink and sit himself down beside her. A shade of blue almost the color of sky, with light pink markings spread across her pretty, heart-shaped face. He’d rather it not be an asari, all things considered. But she’s the only one biting, and he’s on a deadline, so he’ll take it. Besides, she’s as different as she can look from Shepard and still be appealing to him.

He’d rather a human, though, for this. Oh, sure, the stereotype’s there for a reason. In his experience, asari are brilliant in bed, mindfuck and all. And most casual flings can’t find the really juicy stuff anyways, just whatever’s floating to the surface in the moment. To find the buried bits, they have to know you well enough to suss out where to dig.

But what they don’t put in the whole Embracing Eternity brochure is that it’s largely a one-way street. They get to plumb the nooks and crannies in your head, but they control exactly what you see of theirs. At least the experienced ones can. That’s the sordid truth behind why they’re encouraged to be promiscuous in their youth. Have to learn control before they get old enough to have too many important secrets bobbing about.

“I like your scars,” she opens.

Figures. He’s always done well with that type. She’ll want it rough, and right now that suits him just fine.

Fifteen minutes of small talk later, and he has her pressed against the wall in an alley he made sure was clear first. They can find a room later. Right now, he just needs to feel tongue and teeth. Anything to draw the want out of him, poison from a wound. She kisses him back, slick heat in his mouth making him wonder why he ever gave this up.

Her body is tight against him in all the right places, and her breath falls sweet on his neck.

He slides a hand up to grip her hip and she gasps against his skin. Not as slim as Shepard’s hip, his traitorous mind supplies. He ignores it to press wet kisses across the tops of her breasts. A bit too full. Not quite as firm.

Goddamn it.

He raises his teeth to the crook of her neck and bites just hard enough to hear her groan. She drags her knee up the back of his thigh, and suddenly all he feels is Shepard’s fit body beneath him. He’s lifting her up, and it’s Shepard wrapping her long legs around his hips, clenching, and suddenly this is a very very bad idea.

It wouldn’t be the first time he’s bedded someone while thinking of someone else, though he dislikes it. But if he goes through with this tonight, he’s too worked up to hide it. The asari will see it all.

So what if she does, his body eagerly supplies. This one’s been around. He’d guess her at 250 at least. Not a matron yet, but well on her way. It wouldn’t be anything new to her.

Besides, Shepard’s well known. Half the red-blooded males in the galaxy have probably had a hard-on for her at one point or another after the Battle of the Citadel. And not a few blue-blooded ones, he’d guess.

Nothing to be ashamed of.

Only, it’s not just some generic fantasy wank. It’s more than that. This is personal. And god, he stills like someone’s doused him in ice. Then he tugs in a shaky breath and gently sets the asari back down.

“Sorry, sweetheart. Not gonna happen tonight.”

The asari’s still breathless, and still beautiful, he’ll admit. “What? What’s wrong?”

“It’s nothing on you. You’re gorgeous. Just got too much on my mind. Thought I could go through with it. But I can’t.”

“Another woman?”

“Guess you could say that.”

At that, she perks up, starts running a delicately manicured hand down his chest. “I could be her, you know. I’ve done it before…”

He hates the idea. Hates even more how much it tempts him.

Instead, he catches her hand, softly. “Sorry, love. Don’t think you can. Not this one.”

She gives him a dry, frustrated look before straightening the lines of her dress and sauntering away. Classy. She knows when to quit. And she doesn’t look back. Doesn’t see him drop his head against the dirty brick. Doesn’t hear him groan, “Fuck,” as he stalks off seeking a different kind of relief.

***

Shepard’s waiting in the airlock for him when he finally stumbles back to the ship, late and barely holding himself up. She doesn’t like to admit that it worries her. It’s not like him. He’s punctual to a fault, and he always holds his liquor.

“Zaeed,” she eyes him up and down. “We were supposed to leave three hours ago. You smell like a distillery. Where the hell have you been?”

“None of your goddamn business,” he snarls at her. He wobbles, but he doesn’t meet her eyes. The second the decontamination bay door opens, he’s gone.

She tells herself that he’s right. Of course, it’s not her business.

And she most definitely doesn’t wonder why his sudden anger stings.

Or why she let him go without a reprimand.

“Garrus is an idiot,” she says to a blank wall, shaking her head with a rough laugh. 


	5. Exposure

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Zaeed and Shepard share some uncomfortable alone time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks so much to everyone who has read, liked, and commented so far. You have definitely encouraged me to keep working on this.

Shepard blamed the dry spell. She wasn't even sure if you could call it a spell anymore. It had been five years. Not counting the two she'd been dead.  Technically more like a biblical drought.  Perpetual, bone-cracking drought.   After going that long without, even Garrus had started to look good.

So.  The dry spell was the obvious and perfectly reasonable explanation for her body's completely unreasonable current reaction.  

Zaeed stood at the doorway to the starboard cargo hold, towel slung low but tight against his hips, with a few errant droplets of water sliding off his wet hair and down along his roughly muscled, marred shoulders, and suddenly Shepard’s fingertips started to tingle, and she had to remember how to breathe.  

God.  That’s inconvenient.

An armored Zaeed was easier to take. His high shoulder guard and bright gear were designed to give the illusion of bulk; his walk was the stride of a stockier man.  A subtle deception to make enemies underestimate his stealth.  But Shepard had seen him in action. Now, she knew better.

And underneath, he was lithe and lean. 

It occurred to her she had definitely let her eyes stray too long and too low for strictly professional, and he was definitely going to notice if she didn't cover fast. Shepard cocked back on a hip and crossed her arms.  "Zaeed. If I'd known you were throwing a pool party down here, I'd have brought drinks."

"Yeah, yeah. Not all of us have our own private sauna.” He held his arms out as he backed into the room. “Perks of resurrection I guess. You get a shower the size of a cargo hold, while we mere mortals have to make do with soaping each other’s backs on the crew deck.”

“How do you kn—" She narrowed her eyes at him. “You’ve seen the ship schematics.”

“Course I have. What kind of idiot boards a ship without knowing all its secrets first? Good way to get yourself—”

“Spaced?”

“Ah. Yeah. Too soon?”

“I’ll live.” She quirked a grin at him.

He laughed, slow and rich like honey, as Shepard pressed forward into the room. The door closed behind her. Mindful of the towel, Zaeed squatted by a crate to her left and started rummaging through neatly rolled rows of clothing. Shepard caught the edges of thick, ropy scars peaking from his back when he bent, and she looked away.

“What can I do for you, Shepard?

“Massani, what’s the surveillance like in here?”

“Well, the big bug’s still here.” He waved a hand over his shoulder at EDI’s interface. “But Vakarian took care of all the little ones for me, if that’s what you’re after. Owed me on a bet. Don’t tell him, but I knew he’d have done it for free. I’m playing a long con.”

“Of course you are.”

“Anyway, you can speak freely. Or, you know, if there’s anything else you want to do down here. Privately.” He stood tall and shot her a wolfish smile, then made a show of running a hand down his scarred chest, lingering over his hard stomach.

So, playing the flirt this time. Since their last layover on Omega, Zaeed had been bouncing between truculent avoidance and this shamelessly exaggerated banter any time he saw her. Both seemed specifically designed to keep her at a distance, and she still hadn’t figured out exactly why. Garrus had several theories on the subject, all of which she still obstinately refused to entertain.

Still, of the two, Shepard had to admit that she preferred the banter over silence any day.

“Better watch it, Massani. One of these days, somebody’s actually going to take you seriously.”

“God forbid. You know how annoying it gets, ship this small, all the crewman throwing themselves at you? Actually, scratch that. Pretty sure you do. How big was the first Normandy, anyway?”

She ignored the mischief in the wrinkles around his eyes.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Sure, you don’t.” Zaeed bent and finally selected a pair of black boxer briefs and cargo pants out of the crate.

“EDI, log us out, please.”

“Logging you out, Shepard.”

“What’s this all about then?” Zaeed raised an eyebrow.

“Since the Normandy’s run by Cerberus protocol, a few standard Alliance positions are unoccupied on this ship.”

“I’m listening,” he said. “By the way, are you just gonna watch?”

“What?”

Zaeed held up his pants. “Not that I’m complaining, mind. Always willing to give a lady a good show.”

Shepard raised her hands in concession and turned around. She heard the towel drop and tried to think clean thoughts while she listened to him sliding smooth fabric up over hard hips.  
  
“For example,” Shepard continued, “We don’t have a requisitions officer.”

“Thought Miranda handled all that,” he grunted, “By way of the Illusive Man’s plundered pockets. All clear, now.”

Shepard turned back around and leaned against the surveillance table. And, apparently Zaeed thought this conversation didn’t require a shirt. He took his usual place, leaning his broad shoulders back against the far wall. With his chest bare, his posture only underscored the taut valleys leading down from his hips. Shepard felt like she was sweating. Why would she be sweating?

“Miranda is very thorough.” Shepard forcefully brought herself back to task. “And she’s logged the purchase of every single weapon on this ship.”

“So, with Miranda watching the books, the Illusive Man always knows exactly how well-defended we are.”

“Which isn’t a problem. Just as long as we can trust him to never betray us.”

“So, it’s a problem.”

“Yup.”

“And you want me to help you make black market weapons purchases.”

“Yup.”

“Behind my boss’s back. Who’s only the richest, most powerful man in the galaxy.”

“Yup.”

“I’ll see what I can do.”

***

Twelve days later, they sat together in the Hammerhead in a clearing a few kilometers outside of Ithaka, and Shepard listened as a monster storm seemed to shake the roots out of the ground beneath them.

“I thought you said he was close,” Shepard complained.

“No,” Zaeed replied irritably. “I said the signal beacon was close. Don’t know where the bloody salarian is. That’s how he likes it.” He set his datapad down and stared down his nose at her, all haughty exasperation, suddenly more beleaguered professor than vicious killer. “Did you even read my mission brief? He gives me the coordinates to the signal beacon, I get close enough to receive, then when he’s ready, he transmits the pickup location coordinates through the beacon, and I send him the access code to the credits.”

“Whenever he feels like it.”

“Pretty much.” Zaeed picked his datapad back up.

Shepard stifled a groan. Eventually, they had abandoned the front seats to spread out on the main bay floor facing each other, her back to one set of jump-seats and his to the other. They’d stayed on their respective sides without speaking, more or less, for three hours. During that time, Shepard had tried sit-ups, push-ups and planks in full armor. She’d plotted out the next three ground missions, reviewed five supply requisition lists, and read through all of Kelly’s latest crew insights. (Garrus is distant. Miranda is repressed. Jack is volatile. Truly ground-breaking stuff.) She’d exhausted a half-dozen strategy games Garrus had downloaded for her and listened to her favorite music playlist. Twice.

Meanwhile, Zaeed seemed content to study his datapad quietly to himself.

And Shepard was bored out of her mind.

“What are you reading?”

“Nothing.” Zaeed tapped a new page without looking up.

“Must be pretty good nothing,” she sulked. “You’ve barely moved in the last half hour.”

Shepard kicked her feet out and stretched.

“Better mind that. You keep watching me that close, I might start getting ideas.” The suggestive tone was almost absent-minded this time, and that grated on Shepard’s nerves more than the silence. He’d brushed off every attempt she’d made at conversation. Now he didn’t even have the courtesy to put energy into his fake flirting anymore.

“Let me see.”

“Busy.”

“So, just let me see, and you can get back to it.” She placed a palm down on the floor and started inching toward him.

He glared at her over the top of the datapad. “Anyone ever tell you that you’re goddamn nosey?”

“All the time. Is it porn?”

“It’s not porn. Not gonna watch porn on a mission. It’s goddamn unprofessional.”

“So, you’ve got nothing to hide, then. Hand it over.”

“Fine,” he sighed. He waved the datapad at her with exaggerated magnanimity. “By all means.”

She hopped over to his side and leaned against the seats beside him to take her treasure.

“Bossy bitch,” he grumbled as she snatched the pad out of his hands.

“Now, let’s see what we have here.” Shepard righted the datapad eagerly. Then she tried to make sense of the small print.

“Prussia and the Seven Year’s War,” she read aloud. “Seriously? Well, that’s disappointing.”

“Speak for yourself. It’s bloody brilliant.”

“You’ve been ignoring me for hours to read about a war that was over more than four hundred years ago.”

Zaeed patiently held out his hand, and Shepard handed him back the datapad. “Frederick the Great was a goddamn genius. Strategy, logistics, how to raise and train armies. I’ll let you borrow it sometime. Might come in handy for someone who, I don’t know, has a vested interest in winning a goddamn war.”

“It wasn’t all rope-climbing and sharp-shooting at N-school, you know. I do know who he is.” Shepard brushed her hair out of her face and studied him. “This is really what you’ve been reading all this time?”

“You don’t believe me?”

“I do. It’s just, it’s not what I pictured, I guess.”

“Yeah, well, what do you like to read, anyway? You tell me, and then I’ll tell you if it’s ‘what I pictured’.”

Shepard considered it a small victory that at least he finally looked ready to put the pad away.

“These days I don’t read anything for pleasure,” Shepard admitted, trying to bite down hard on any self-pity that tried to squeak its way through. “It’s all mission logs and planet scanning.”

“But when you do?”

Shepard considered for a moment. “Crime novels, I guess. Feels like a long time ago.”

“Makes sense.”

“Really.”

“Sure. You’re the type of do-gooder who likes to see the bad guy get his in the end.”

“I don’t know how you can make something that’s perfectly normal sound like such an insult.” Shepard shook her shoulders out as she drew her knees up and settled further into place beside him.

He flashed her a crooked smile. “Goddamn natural talent.”

Shepard laughed.

A flash. A boom. And the entire shuttle went dark.

They sighed in tandem.

“These Hammerhead shields are more useless than a salarian's prick,” Zaeed muttered beside her.

“Magnetic storm must have fried the onboard computer,” she told him. “I’ll have to manually log in and prompt the auto-repair.”

“Security protocols are automatically engaged. And since we can’t exactly network with the Illusive Man’s pet computer for this little adventure, you’ll have to hack it. Told you we should’ve brought the turian,” he clucked.

“You also told me that bringing anyone else with you might blow the deal.”

Shepard heard a tapping sound come from Zaeed’s direction. Probably trying his omni-tool. Unsuccessfully.

“That’s why I told you I should come alone,” he snapped back. “When you didn’t trust me to make the pickup without you, I told you we should’ve brought the turian.”

“Yeah, and I told you I always leave at least one adult on the ship.”

“What? The cheerleader doesn’t count?”

“One adult not owned and operated by the Cerberus corporation. And you’re using Jack’s terms now?” She raised an eyebrow at him that she knew he probably couldn’t see. “Anyway, don’t worry about it. I’ve got this.”

“You been holding out on me then?” he asked slyly. “Last I heard, you were a vanguard. They teach you some previously unmentioned tech skills at N-school while you were busy climbing ropes and reading history books?”

“I hack more than half the credits we bring back to the ship, and you know it. Now, shut up, and watch a master at work.” Shepard crawled around him to the control console at his far side, felt for the panel until she found it, then popped it open. The emergency display surrounded them in a weakly flickering glow as she began to type.

Zaeed leaned over her shoulder. “Shepard,” he cautioned, “You screw that up, and the whole system locks you out. Then the only way back in is a command override authorizing a—”

“A hard reboot. Yeah, I know. So, stop distracting me.” She would never admit that it was his proximity, more than his words, that was so distracting. Whether it was the darkness or just the unexpected closeness of another warm body, her senses were heightened. The creak of his armor as it brushed against hers, the barest whisper of breath as he craned his head around to watch her. She imagined she could even make out the vague scent of his soap. Eucalyptus, maybe? That wasn’t—

The bright red lockout screen winked on, angrily mocking her in the darkness.

“Damn,” Shepard said.

“Hard reboot, it is, then?”

She didn’t have to look at him to catch the shit-eating grin she knew he wore. “Don’t gloat. It’s unbecoming.”

“I’ll try to keep that in mind when I apply for the cover of Gentleman’s Quarterly.”

Shepard groaned and began typing in the sequence to start the full system reboot. “All power will be down at least an hour. Damn it.” She felt along the edges of the wall for one of the equipment packs. When she found one, she pulled out a small emergency lantern, turned it on and placed it on the floor between them. The warm light filled the spaces between them and stretched out the shadows behind them.

One by one, Shepard popped the seals on her chest-plate.

“What the hell are you doing?” Some strangeness in the tenor of his voice pulled Shepard’s attention instantly.

“Life support’s out for an hour,” Shepard replied, drawing out the last word in irritation.

“And?” The look he gave her smacked of confusion and a hint of something she’d almost swear was nerves. He turned to look down at his dead omni-tool as if it had suddenly grown more interesting in the intervening seconds.

“And, I may not have read your mission brief, but I did read the colony description,” Shepard snarked. “It’s hot as hell on Proteus, and the Hammerhead has worthless environmental shielding even at full strength. So, I’d rather not roast.”

“The, uh, the suits. They’ve got independent environmental controls,” Zaeed pointed out.

“Yours working?” Shepard asked, even though she knew the answer.

“Goddamnit.”

“Yup. Magnetic storms are a bitch.”

“So.”

“So, make yourself comfortable, Massani.”

Shepard left her pile of armor and came back to flop down beside him. The under-suit was tight, but it was breathable.

And at least now, Shepard was pretty sure she could get him to entertain her.

***

As far as developments go, this came in somewhere between smelling a krogan’s testicles and getting skewered in the spleen with a nathak tooth.

It had taken a while, after Omega, but Zaeed had finally made an unsettled sort of peace with his fascination with Shepard. At first, he’d steered clear of her at every opportunity, afraid he’d give himself away with some obvious, childish slipup. It had been so long since he’d felt anything remotely similar. His defenses against it were weak. He figured a few days without her would cool any heat, he’d get hold of himself, focus back on the mission and move on as if nothing had changed.

To his dismay, her absence only made her easier to idealize. Which quickly turned into far too many embarrassed hours taking himself in hand on his cot while he imagined the shape of her mouth against him, the sounds she’d make, how she'd taste. All the deep-dwelling foolishness he knew she’d kill him for if she could actually see behind his thoughts. And she was too damn good at reading people in the first place.

But god knew in a ship this small he couldn’t avoid her forever. Which was how he’d stumbled upon his new plan. He’d been up to the mess hall for a late-night coffee when he’d run into her. Literally. Shoulder checked her as he was turning away from the coffee pot and she was rounding the corner toward it. The irony being that the reason he didn’t see her was because he was caught up in plotting out what to do if he did.

“Don’t need the pretense if you want to touch me, sweetheart. All you have to do is ask.”

The jibe had come out of his mouth before his brain caught up. When it did, his reflexes turned to damage control, smirking so crudely that it extended into farce. Then, he winked. For good measure.

“In your dreams, Massani,” Shepard had laughed.

And he had laughed back. Because, yeah. Hiding in plain sight was a plan he could goddamn well work with. Hiding in plain sight had saved his hide more times than he could count.

Now, of all things, it was the darkness that was threatening to catch him out.

When he’d heard the telltale pop and clack of her armor seals releasing, he’d had to fight down the instant rush of blood to his lower half with a fury. Being so close to her in a confined space while she was wearing nothing more than a skintight suit seemed tailor-made to test his restraint. And if he was similarly stripped down, he’d have little room to hide it if his body decided to betray him.

He reminded himself that he could still use this to his advantage. Showing himself off, letting her reject the laughable idea of him was all part of the plan, after all, wasn’t it? There was something innately comforting about preening around in front of her, knowing she wouldn’t bite. The gentle nip to his pride had done wonders to bring him down to earth. No reason why this should be any different. Zaeed took a deep breath, carefully unfurled his armor and came back to sit beside her.

The emergency kit lantern between them softened Shepard’s features, caught the highlights of her hair, made her look supple, inviting. Though god knows she needed no help on that score where he was concerned lately.

He wondered idly if it did the same for him, if maybe it made him actually look his goddamn age for once instead of the ten years or so that his scars and scowl seemed to add. He caught her gaze, watched as it trailed from his marred blue eye down over the nasty gouge at his cheek. Guess not. He pulled the damaged side of his face back, cloaking it in shadow.

“Bloody rude to stare.”

“I’m not staring. I’m thinking.” Her voice had a curious, hesitant lilt to it. “I’ve been meaning to ask you about something.”

“What’s that, then?”

“There’s an upgrade I can make to the medical bay. It’s not worth the credits for me. But if other people might use it, it could be.”

“And? What’s it do?”

Shepard paused, pulled the side of her mouth into a nervous little moue.

“It heals scars.”

Zaeed raised his brows. He knew his face wasn’t exactly pleasant, but her words punched a tender little hole in his ego, nonetheless. He couldn’t dredge up any anger in it though. Shepard was nothing if not practical. And a little too goddamn blunt.

“Why didn’t you ask your spiky friend, first, then? His mug’s worse than mine.”

“I did.”

“And?” He cocked his head.

“He said no.”

“Right,” Zaeed said calmly. “Well, there you have it.”

“You really wouldn’t use it? Could be,” she moved her fingers, uncharacteristically unsure. “I don’t know, a fresh start, I guess.” Then Shepard tried on a jovial look. “Hell, Zaeed, with the money you’re making on this job, I’m pretty sure you could buy an eye implant that actually matches.”

“Oh, yeah? And who’s to say the old eye matched, then, eh?”

Shepard blanched.

“Oh, ease up. I’m joking,” Zaeed assured her. “Credits were hard to come by after Vido blacklisted me. I took what I could get.”

“I just wanted to make sure I wasn’t being selfish, saving the credits for something else,” Shepard said as she examined her palms. “Chakwas said my cybernetics scars should heal on their own, given enough time. But not everybody has that choice.”

“Would you get it done otherwise?”

“No.” She watched her softly glowing fingers play in the light and shadow. “It feels wrong, somehow, I guess.”

Ah. There it is. She wasn’t trying to get him to use the machine at all. Just looking for validation. Zaeed felt a relieved little flutter, then cursed himself for being vain enough to feel offended in the first place.

“Yeah,” he said. “Wear your scars around long enough, and they get to be, not friends, exactly, but something close to it. Then wiping them clean seems like cheating somehow. Like you’re trying to forget a lesson you learned the hard way.” Zaeed tilted his chin up as he looked at her. “Figure that’s why you miss your old ones.”

“How did you know I had scars before?” Shepard asked, a lifetime of suspicion leaking into the corners of her mouth.

“Saw the bandage over your eye on the vids. For weeks after Torfan, couldn’t walk past a news console without seeing your bleeding face. Same thing after the Battle of the Citadel.”

Shepard eased back. “Talk about cheating,” she said. “I was about to be impressed.”

“Oh, I think I can still impress you,” he teased.

“That so?” She quirked an eyebrow.

His smile turned cocky. “I bet I can tell you where they were. The big ones, at least.”

Shepard eyed him suspiciously. “Really.”

“Yeah. What the hell. Got nothing better to do.”

“So, what are the terms?”

Zaeed rubbed a thoughtful hand over his chin. “If I win, I get to use that oversized shower of yours. One turn. Long as I want. And don’t skimp. I know they give you all sorts of goodies. I want the fancy shampoo that tingles. Exfoliating body wash. Whole bit.”

“Because you exfoliate.”

“Goddamn right I do. A man’s never too old to pamper himself.”

Shepard chuckled and held up a hand. “Fine. Fine. And if you lose?”

“I clean your guns for a week.”

“I don’t let anyone near my guns.”

“Alright, so what do you want?”

“Hmm.” Shepard looked at the ceiling, dramatically considering, before dropping the hammer.

“Grunt needs practice sparring.”

“You’re fucking joking.”

“Garrus won’t do it anymore. I think Grunt got a little too eager to share his thoughts on fringe removal.”

“He’s a krogan,” Zaeed protested. “They’re goddamn impenetrable. Why the fuck does he need to train hand to hand anyway?”

“The tank gave him the concepts, but he has zero practice actually using them. That makes him think he’s twice as good as he actually is.”

“Which makes him a liability,” Zaeed finished. “Yeah, fine, I get it. Deal.”

“If it makes you feel any better, you’re also one of the only people on the ship he doesn’t routinely fantasize about murdering.”

“I’m touched.”

Shepard crossed her legs and turned toward him, practically oozing energy at the chance for a new activity. He hadn’t been intentionally ignoring her before the power outage. It was just easier than dealing with her presence, with her intoxicatingly oblivious closeness. But he could admit to egging her on once he’d realized it bothered her. Shepard desperate for his undivided attention. It pleased him far more than it should have.

“Alright,” she said. “Give it your best shot.”

“Left eyebrow.”

“You already said you saw that on the vids. You’re gonna have to do better than that to win.”

“Just warming up,” he assured her. “Palms of your hands, left and right.”

Now, Shepard looked intrigued. “How did you know about that?”

Zaeed leaned back confidently. “Nope. That would be telling. I’ll take it I’m right?”

“Yeah. You’re right,” she said, with equal parts curiosity and unease.

“Right shoulder.”

“Yes.”

“And your back.”

“That too,” she admitted. “You finished?”

He could tell by her tone that the ones on her back bothered her. Going by how she’d likely gotten them, it wasn’t hard to imagine why.

“Think so.” He let his eyes roam slowly, playing the part, taking advantage of the chance to give her one last thorough once-over. “Yeah. That’s all I’ve got.”

“You missed one,” she crowed. “Right rib.”

“Goddamnit.”

“Looks like you’ll be sparring with Grunt while I enjoy my nice long, hot showers with the tingly shampoo all by myself.” She leaned forward so he could better make out the triumphant look on her face.

“You’re a right bitch,” he growled. Thoughts of her in the shower intruded, all that slick wet skin, touching herself, soap sliding down. He felt suddenly awkward, too hot and far too close in the small space.

“So, spill,” Shepard prompted. “How did you know?”

He tried not to look too relieved at the distraction her voice provided and shrugged.

“You touch the big ones. Not just you. Lots of people do it. Like tonguing a loose tooth. Had to train myself out of it early on.” Zaeed rubbed a thumb over the valleys of his cheek to demonstrate. “Apparently, it’s applicable cross-species. Vakarian still scratches his anytime he thinks we’re not looking. And half the time even when we are.”

“I’ve noticed.”

“So, yeah. I knew about the eyebrow, but I would’ve guessed it anyway. You brush it with your fingers sometimes. You rub the palms of your hands with your thumbs now and then. And the one to the shoulder must have been bad, cause you roll the goddamn thing like it’s on fucking wheels.”

Shepard snorted. “Knife in the joint out in the Verge. Popped right through a seam in my armor. Wouldn’t think it would still ache after they rebuilt me. Miranda said it’s psychological, but I swear she signed her name in there somewhere, and I’m just feeling it run over the bone.”

Zaeed gave her a grin and scratched the back of his head. “Well, there you have it. Secret to my success.”

“One problem,” Shepard said. “My back. I never touch those.”

“Ah, well. Guess I cheated on that a bit too. I studied up on you before I came on board. You’re not the only one who’s been caught by slavers, you know.” He pointed a thumb at his own back. “And they like the fucking lash.”

“Yeah.” She didn’t shudder. She was far too controlled for that. But the sudden stiffness in her spine said enough.

“Torso and back are harder to tell,” he said, intentionally light. “Less likely to touch there. But aside from those, whenever I meet someone that's had work done, it’s a pretty good parlor trick.”

“Yeah,” she said again, but her eyes were shadowed. Zaeed found himself desperately wanting to pull her out, rope her back from the unpleasant hole of memory he’d just inadvertently tipped her into.

He suddenly leaned his weight back, tugged the pants of his under-suit down over one hip. He slid the hem of his under-shirt up to uncover the raised, dotted crescent scar that traced from his pelvis to the upper right side of his waist.

"See that?" He asked abruptly, and was rewarded with a wide-eyed look full of interest instead of melancholy. “Goes all the way ‘round the back.”

"Krogan bite," he said. "Damn thing shook me like a rag doll before I slapped a sticky grenade to his face and threatened to blow us both to kingdom come."

"Then what?"

"What do you think? He put me down, offered me a drink, and asked if I wanted in on his next score." Zaeed chuckled as he put his clothes back in place. "We were partners on and off for a couple of years, ‘til he took a job as captain in the Blood Pack. Far as I know, he's still there."

"A story where no one ends up dead?" Shepard settled back against the jump-seats and made a show of appraising him. "You're slipping, Massani." His chest puffed at the low grin she slid him at the end.

"Yeah, well. Someone's gotta balance out all your casualty free victories, Shepard. Hard to trump the queen of impossible tales."

Something flickered in her face at that, something raw that made him immediately regret saying it. "Not all of my stories have happy endings, you know," she said.

Then she raised her own shirt to reveal a patch of smooth flat skin, still faintly glowing with the red intersections of cybernetics. She pointed to the middle of her ribs, stared at the skin as if it might suddenly revert under the pressure of her finger. "Torfan," she offered, voice low but steady. "That's the one you missed. The rest of Torfan was right there."

The fetid air condensed between them as he traced his eyes over bare flesh. She looked so warm, vulnerable. Almost touchable, for once, even if it was illusion. And Zaeed felt a pressing need burrowing up from somewhere dark and hard, to make her smile, give her something. He knew he wasn’t special. Knew he wasn't the first to feel it. Wouldn't be the last.

Weight of the galaxy on her shoulders, and nobody could give her a goddamn thing except competence because that's the only gift she'd accept from any of them. And it didn't even really count as a boon to her because she was always so goddamn confident in herself and her people that it was expected, demanded.

But like everyone else, he’d tried to rise to the task. A steady gun hand. Some strategic insight, sometimes. A welcome distraction, maybe, on the best days. He'd been enjoying those days more than was good for him. Wanted more of them. Knew exactly how dangerous that could be, too. Because he's an all or nothing man when he finds something he wants. Always has been. And it's a goddamn tragic flaw.

Shepard wiped a sheen of sweat from her forehead with the back of her hand, and he watched with fascination as tiny bits of hair clung to the edges of her cheeks. The dark damp strands, almost crude in their humanity, made the thin red cracks of her face stand out in relief. Razor sharp lines between the living and the dead. Not a beautiful woman, by most standards, maybe. Thin lips. Cold eyes. But attractive. The way she thought, moved, the sleek muscle and sensual battle calm. She was so goddamn attractive to him that it was hard to think.

He bared his throat to her then, pulling down his collar to show a meandering line across his collarbone. "Turian claw," he said, trying to return to the game, desperate to feel reliable ground beneath him.

Shepard was a good sport. She propped herself up on one hand to give him a closer look. Then, she reached out with her free hand and rubbed a thumb across the thickest band of tissue. And, Christ. He could barely feel it through the dead nerves, but it went all over him, all the same. How long had it been since he'd been touched like that? Had he ever? Gentle. Curious. Without expectation. He felt his heart bounding up under his breastbone and tried to swallow it down, knew she could probably see the uncomfortable tension in his jaw as he willed himself still.

"That's a good one," she told him, keeping her eyes on the waxy skin while he glanced at her.

"Yeah," he choked out, cleared his throat loudly as she pulled her hand back. He read it, then, in the swift pull of her hand back to her side, surprisingly slim fingers clenched awkwardly. She hadn't really meant to touch him. Even that tiny concession, that small human contact, brought out a cornered, feral look to her face. She's a goddamn stray cat. Puma, more like. Fucking deadly. Either way, he'd be a fool to think anyone could gentle her.

"It’s stifling in here." Zaeed eased his collar back up, clapped his other hand across the back of his neck and tried to rub the sweat away.

"Told you."

"Arrogant bitch," he retorted.

"Flatterer."

They relaxed back into the familiar banter and sweltered together in dimness until the reboot finished.

The front console flashed insistently with the receipt of an incoming message as soon as it powered back up.

"Hopefully, that's our man." Zaeed crossed the compartment to take his place in the pilot seat, with Shepard close behind him.

"Why are you doing this?" she suddenly asked.

He swung around to find her frowning in thought. "You talking about the suicide part in general or this mission in particular?"

"The Illusive Man hired you. I didn’t. You’re betraying him by being here."

Zaeed gave her his best casual shrug. "Who's to say I'm not planning to double dip by selling you out later?"

"You won’t," she answered. He felt a well of pride at that, her utter certainty, even as he wondered just how much of it was feigned. Just a tactical manipulation meant to secure its truth. Maybe this entire mission was just another one of her hospitality rounds. Bolstering supply lines of trust like it was food or water. Shepard dug for the best in people until she found it, or at least until she made them believe she had.

These days Vakarian's tale about Saren's suicide didn't strike him as quite so unbelievable as it once did.

"Even my best contacts aren't going to keep quiet with the kind of money the Illusive Man can throw at them, and you know the AI’s always listening, whether it pretends to or not,” Zaeed felt compelled to mention. “So, no matter what, word will get out about what we're doing."

"Sure, it will." Shepard laced her fingers behind her neck and relaxed into her seat while Zaeed downloaded the coordinates and started transmitting the payment codes.

"Which, I take it, is exactly what you want. Keep him chasing leads, wasting money and time and effort, trying to get a good guess at our defenses." Zaeed shook his head, impressed. "Never a dull moment with you, Shepard."

He thought she might smile, but he looked up to find her still considering him earnestly.

"Crossing a man like that,” Shepard eyed him. “He'll be a dangerous enemy to have, Zaeed."

"More dangerous than you?" Zaeed let out an incredulous huff.

"No," she said with a flash of teeth. "Not more dangerous than me."

The fierce, wild grin she gave him struck him low, deep, and tight in a way that her earlier flash of skin hadn't managed. Zaeed adjusted himself in his seat uncomfortably.

“Well, there’s your answer, then,” he said, with carefully forced calm.

Then he plotted his next course through the darkening storm. 


	6. Franchise

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Zaeed plots to leave the Alliance.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Flashbacks are probably the slow part of this slow burn. Hopefully, they're worth it.

Zaeed felt a lightness in his chest even as the tension threatened to drown him. These last few weeks had worn his nerves into frayed tethers. Waiting for shore leave on Benning, wondering every moment when some dumb bastard at criminal investigations might luck onto a piece of the puzzle that would secure the noose round his neck. But it’s almost over now.

One more meeting. One more, and he’s free and clear. He picked a chair near the back door with a view of the exits, settled in with his back to the beige wall, ordered a black coffee, and waited. The contact was due at 0800, so Zaeed cased the small cafe at 0730 before he came in. No bombs. No traps. No backup that he can see. So far, so good.

When he’d decided to leave the Alliance, he knew he’d have to play it carefully. Right people, right timing. New I.D. had to be solid. He didn’t exactly fancy spending the rest of his life looking over his shoulder for some jackboot patrol to haul him in by the ears.

Doing things right was costly. Took almost all his credits and a few promised favors to some of the lower rung sort after he’s out, but now he’s only one meeting away from securing what he needs. New name. New life. He can disappear into the lower docks as a new man while the Alliance hunts an A.W.O.L. “Zaeed Massani” to his no longer existent grave.

He immediately knew when it had gone to hell. Spotted the man a good ten meters before he stepped through the doorway. The stranger had the kind of presence that demands notice. Regulation light brown hair above a perfectly trimmed regulation goatee. Fierce eyes gauging the surroundings. Never mind the blue jeans and soft leather jacket.

All soldier, that one, and all business. No way he’s the contact. And no goddamn way he’s here by coincidence.

Zaeed wondered, without much venom, who it was that had betrayed him. Yamamoto, most like. Zaeed cursed himself for a fool. Hadn’t Yamamoto always seemed just a hair too clean, too fresh-faced, to be working in the dirty back business of aiding absconders? Shouldn’t have been so desperate. Should’ve just trusted his instincts.

It occurred to Zaeed to shoot his way out before he even realized he’d placed his hand on the shitty contraband pistol in his pocket. Just as quickly occurred to him that it was a ridiculously foolhardy idea. He let the gun be. A firefight would bring in a veritable army. This was just one man. One man with a back like a rod of iron maybe, but Zaeed could try his luck if he could just get the narc alone somehow.

Besides, if they were really onto him, wouldn’t the Alliance have come at him full on? When he’d imagined getting caught, as he had dozens of times, it was always a squad of lantern-jawed do-rights that did the job. One man, out of uniform, that meant more to the story. That meant a chance for an unexpected endgame here. Extortion shakedown, maybe?

“Zaeed Massani,” the man declared as he sat down across from Zaeed at the table.

“Pleased to meet you, Massani,” Zaeed said gamely. He leaned back further against the wall and crossed his arms. “What can I do for you this fine morning?”

“Cut the shit, Massani. I’m not here to play games.”

“Well, why don’t you tell me what you are here for, then, and we’ll start from there?”

The stranger signaled the waitress and ordered a cup of coffee, one cream, one sugar and settled back slowly as she walked away. The coffee was awful in new colonies like this. Freeze dried stuff from earth, reconstituted, and it never seemed to taste the same. But this was a message for Zaeed. The stranger intended to stay for a while. Just two men having a polite conversation. He stared at Zaeed a long few seconds before speaking again, slowly and clearly.

“You could have killed Andreas and Bauman. They trusted you. They were battle worn. You could have staged them the same way you did Warner. No one would ever know. Excellent work on that, by the way. Simple. Clean. Most people make things too damn complicated.”

Well, hell.

The man went on, “You’re smart enough to know better, but you left two loose ends. And those loose ends are the only reason I’m sitting here at this table with you instead of watching an M.P. squad kick your teeth down the back of your throat.”

As interrogations go, this was a hell of start. All cards on the table. Zaeed took a sip of coffee, tried not to look impressed, said nothing. Clearly Alliance. I.A., maybe. But something in the way he carried himself said he was too familiar with real battle for a desk job. Special forces, then. High level grad from I.C.T. The legendary cleanup crew for the messes no one else has the guts to tackle or talk about.

“Bauman cracked, of course.” If the stranger was looking for Zaeed to react at that, Zaeed disappointed him. If Zaeed had expected Bauman to hold out forever, he wouldn’t have been so desperate to shove off so fast in the first place. Hell, the only real surprise was that the boy kept quiet this long.

The stranger carried on as if he weren’t sitting here making the case for dismantling Zaeed’s brief life. “He didn’t say much. Didn’t know much. Not the way you left things. Just a feeling he couldn’t let go of, and he finally had to get it off his chest. He’s a good kid.”

“You ought to see him throw a grenade,” Zaeed added amiably.

That brought the smallest quirk of lips from the other man. “Why didn’t you kill them?”

Zaeed bent forward and placed his palms on the table. “Help me sort this out, why don’t you? You know who I am. You sound like the type to do your homework. That means you read my report on the clusterfuck at Canto. Now, according to you, I was smart enough to kill Warner, god knows why, without leaving a trace, but dumb enough to leave the only two possible witnesses alive. Sounds to me like your theory’s got more holes than a turian teething ring.”

The stranger leaned forward in kind. “I don’t need theories. My proof is in the crisp new identification cards you were planning to collect. The ones I intercepted on the way over from the lower end of Joughlin. Arata Boetto? Really, Massani. Do you just draw your new names out of a hat?”

“If I were the type of man to use false names in the first place, I might say beggars can’t be choosers.”

The waitress brought the stranger his coffee, and he tested it, disdainfully, as she drifted away again.

“Speaking of names,” Zaeed said, “Don’t think you’ve gotten around to telling me yours.”

“Commander Hackett,” the man answered, this time taking a long draught.

“Would that title happen to have an N with a number attached to it somewhere? 5, maybe?”

Hackett narrowed his eyes. “I’m not the one answering questions here today.”

“Ah. Less than 5, then. Brass wants me for something big, though, if they sent someone like you out on the hunt. Think that bodes better for me than Alliance prison garb.” Zaeed took a sip of coffee gone cold. “Alright. Give me the hard sell. Ask me a question worth answering, and I’ll consider it.”

Hackett looked both relieved and chagrined at the move to transactional terms, but he quickly returned to stone-faced. Zaeed had a feeling that look was a well-honed default.

“First, let me tell you what the Alliance knows. The Alliance knows Canto was a hard-won victory. According to the rest of your team, you’re the only reason anyone walked off that rock alive. We know you’re good with weapons, and you have a talent for strategy. We know from crew reports that you tried to get Warner to re-evaluate the drop plan several times before you went down. That’s what the Alliance knows.”

Hackett drew Zaeed’s gaze and lowered his voice to a growl. “Now, let me tell you what I know. I know Warner was a coward who botched the mission and got damn near everyone killed. I know his father’s an admiral who wants this whole mess cleaned up as quickly and quietly as possible, just as long as we give his son a post-humous medal of valor.” Zaeed snorted, but Hackett ignored him.

“I know you ran guns and protection rackets in London before you faked your way into the Alliance with stolen bona fides. I know you have a well-documented problem with authority. Finally, I know the shots that killed Warner came after all hostiles were down, with you as the only witness, and here you are, planning to run. So, my question to you is this: do you want the rest of the Alliance to know what I know?” Hackett crossed his arms, lips pressed in an unforgiving line. “How about that? That one worth answering?”

Zaeed felt a sliver of relief. At least they were speaking the same language now. He fiddled with the handle of his mug, tried to look disinterested, and suddenly felt very old for his seventeen years. “And? If I don’t want them to know? What’ll it cost me?”

Hackett, too, looked relieved to finally get down to brass tacks. “You’re uniquely positioned to fill a very specific need, Massani.”

“Not sure I like the sound of that.”

Hackett went on again as if he hadn’t spoken. “There are ways people can still help further Alliance goals, even in a civilian capacity. We hire freelancers from time to time for certain missions. Discreet missions.”

“Sure. Black ops barters. Off the books strafing runs. Government disavows all knowledge bullshit, eh? I won’t take orders from Alliance brass ever again. I’m no bureaucratic whore. Count me out.”

“We’ve already established you’re a whore, Massani. Now, we’re just haggling over the rates.” Hackett raised an eyebrow.

“Goddamn terrible old joke.”

“Doesn’t make it less true.”

“Fine, then. Let’s talk rates.”

“We’ve had word there’s a turian smuggling a drug called Hallex in to the grunts on Alliance patrols.” Hackett shoved his drink aside and leaned forward.

“Hallex, eh? I’ve heard of it, but not much.”

“It causes a high similar to MDMA, from what I understand, but more potent. It’s possible he’s just a private dealer looking to make inroads into a new market.”

“Or, it’s possible he’s a plant from the Hierarchy hoping to help destabilize us from within. You want him alive, I take it?”

“Dead turians don’t exactly respond well to interrogation.”

Zaeed pursed his lips together. “And, you want it done quietly. So, I’m betting the rumors I’ve heard about a ceasefire coming up have some teeth to them. Don’t want to stir the pot if he turns out to be an independent contractor. But you need to know fast so you can use it against the birds in settling terms if he’s not.”

“You know, you’re smarter than you look, Massani.” Hackett openly appraised him.

“Yeah, yeah. Save it for someone who needs his ego stroked. You get me the details on the job. I’ll look it over and tell you if I can do it or not. But if I do, I need to know what I’m getting in exchange.”

“What happened on Canto is done. You’re free and clear on the record. You get an honorable discharge. That happens up front. And if the job goes well, we pay you for it. You use your money however you see fit. A man with your skills, I expect you’ll find the type of work that men like you find.”

“Men like me, eh?” Zaeed sniffed.

“And,” Hackett continued, “If you’re good at it, from time to time, we’ll require your services. No retainer. We negotiate each job based on expenses, risk, and the level of discretion necessary.”

Well, that could have been a whole hell of a lot worse. Still, doesn’t look good to roll over at first offers. “You want me to be of any use to you,” Zaeed said, “I’m gonna need some goddamn pocket change to get started. Had everything I owned tied up in the bloody snitches you snagged my cards off of.”

The commander’s shoulders smoothed just a fraction. “A small initial stipend can be arranged. Consider it a show of good faith.”

“I want right of first refusal on any big scores. And I want full autonomy. Don’t wanna be checking every dark corner for your ugly mug just because I decide not to take a job.”

“You’ll get first right of refusal on scores when you earn it, Massani, not before. But you’ll have your freedom to refuse.”

“And I want a dishonorable discharge.”

Hackett cocked his head. “You sure about that?”

“Yeah. It’ll help getting work. No one trusts the boys in blue. Dishonorable for conduct unbecoming. That should do just fine.”

Hackett nodded slowly. “Alright. That should be easy enough.”

They didn’t shake hands. Didn’t seem like the sort of deal that begged for formality. But Hackett looked as satisfied with the terms as Zaeed felt. Zaeed downed the dregs of his coffee with a sour turn of his lips then grinned. “This looks like the beginning of a beautiful goddamn friendship.”

Hackett remained unmoved. “I hate to put a damper on things, but there is one other condition we need to discuss.”

Knew it was too bloody easy. “Oh? What’s that, then?”

“Warner’s medal. We need a witness statement recommending him for it.”

“Write up whatever bloody thing you want,” Zaeed snapped without pause. “I’ll sign it.”

“Really?” Hackett showed a modicum of genuine emotion at the revelation. Surprise in the slightest shift of brows.

“Sure,” Zaeed shrugged. “Give the man the goddamn Star of Terra for all I care. Dead men and medals mean nothing to me.”

Hackett’s communicator beeped then, and Zaeed wondered idly if he’d had it set to a timer. Sounds about right for bloody I.C.T. All contract negotiations with unsavory potential mercenaries must be completed in thirty minutes or less.

“Time for me to go,” Hackett announced as he pushed his mug forward. “Carry on as usual for now. I’ll be in touch in the next few days to work out the details.”

“Hackett, there’s still one thing that bothers me about all this.”

“What’s that?”

“These missions you’re talking about. High stakes. Discretion. Sort of thing that requires a certain type of professionalism. Not that I’m complaining. But after everything you think you know, why me?”

“This is a trial run, Massani, not a marriage proposal. Brass thinks you can be useful. But as far as I’m concerned, any soldier who would turn on one of his own men is a damn disgrace to the uniform.”

“Yeah, well, far as I’m concerned, the second he tucked tail and ran, he stopped being one of my men.”

Hackett met his eyes, stared hard. “Witnesses or not, it never even occurred to you to kill the others, did it?”

Zaeed gritted his teeth, tried to control his breathing.

Hackett gave him the slightest hangman’s grin. “You know, Massani, I think this arrangement is going to work out just fine.” Hackett swiped a finger across a kiosk to pay the tab and walked out without looking back.


	7. Grappling

"Shepard, get down to the shuttle bay right the fuck now."

Jack's tone brooked no argument, and Shepard found herself running for the SR-2's elevator door before the comm. light winked out.

She came to a stop just inside the hangar, pulling her gun before the scene even fully registered. Jack, to her right, glowing dimly and very nearly bouncing on the balls of her feet. To Shepard's left, a visibly furious Grunt was shifting uncomfortably on knees that oozed blood across the floor. An equally furious Zaeed stood close behind him, his bowie knife tucked under the edge of Grunt's fattest right head plate.

"My knees will finish regenerating soon, human," Grunt growled at Zaeed. Shepard's grip tightened on her pistol, but she didn't raise it yet.

"And you'd best stay still when they do. Wouldn't want to jostle me, would you? I might get careless. Blade might slip." Zaeed's voice was low and lethal against the side of Grunt's face, his grip on the handle as steady as stone.

"What the hell is going on here?"

"Just settling a difference of opinion. Nothing to concern yourself with, Shepard." Zaeed spoke to her but never took his eyes off the krogan in front of him. She didn't blame him.

"Really," Shepard said slowly. "Because it looks like something that concerns me very much."

"Over in a flash, soon as he takes back what he said."

"I'll eat your heart first."

"Be awful hard to do that with 10 inches of steel in your brain." Zaeed's voice was velvet and unyielding. It wasn't the voice of the man who chuckled richly at her jokes around the mess hall table and always asked if she needed another cup of coffee while he was up. This was the man who had made a living from killing. In a strange moment of vertigo, she had to remind herself that regardless of whatever mission-bred comradery they’d developed, that’s who he’d always been. Her trigger finger itched.

"What, exactly, do you want him to take back, Zaeed?"

Jack beat him to the answer. “Krogan kept talking about how much shit the tank knew, how all parents are pretty much worthless, usual superiority bullshit, and then Massani just lost his fucking mind. Kneecapped Grunt before I even saw him draw his gun." She evaluated Zaeed with an appreciative cock of her head. "Didn't know the old man could move that fast." 

"You could have tried to stop this," Shepard told Jack over her shoulder.

"I'm not their damn babysitter," Jack snapped back. 

"Uh-huh." Shepard waited.

"Hey, what do you want from me? I called you, didn't I?" Jack asked through hunched shoulders.

"Zaeed? Wanna help me out here?" Shepard raised an eyebrow at him.

"Just giving the pup a lesson in cultural sensitivity, Shepard." Voice calm, too calm for the circumstances. Then, a fraction lower, "My mother was a goddamn saint."

Well, that was... unexpected. 

"Grunt, take it back," she ordered.

"I won't take it back just because a puny human’s too weak to hear the truth," Grunt insisted.

"The three of us took down a thresher maw together, Grunt," Shepard said, exasperated. "On foot. Are you really calling him weak after that?"

"He can fight," Grunt admitted slowly under his breath. Then he continued, annoyed, "I only said it was better to learn galactic history without the incessant coddling that your pathetic mothers and fathers..." Grunt's words shut down on a high wheeze as Zaeed applied pressure to the knife. Blood began dribbling down toward Grunt’s wide mouth. 

"Think I told you that's enough of that," Zaeed murmured.

Shepard ignored Zaeed completely as she caught Grunt's wild eyes again. She wondered at the absurdity of that development. Between the two of them right now, she was convinced the krogan was the better one to reason with. 

"Grunt," she tried, "for many humans, parents teach us goals and values. They fight beside us, give us real world skills we need to survive. Just like a battlemaster. What would you do if someone called me worthless?"

"I'd rip his throat out," Grunt replied, easily, if a tad breathless.

Shepard waited with her hand near the trigger hoping the penny would drop. She really didn't want to shoot anyone today.

Grunt squinted in thought. "So," he said slowly, "I insulted his battlemaster."

"Goddamn right you did," Zaeed answered.

"Alright,” he said easily. “I take it back."

In an instant, Zaeed had the blade roughly cleaned and sheathed. He reached a hand out to help Grunt gain his feet and clapped him on the shoulder. They nodded at each other, then Zaeed walked past Shepard and out the door without a word.

"Huh," Jack said. Shepard couldn't have said it better. 

She went to the first aid kit on the wall to grab Grunt some medi-gel for his legs, but he waved her away. "Maybe they'll scar," he pronounced, pleased. Then, thoughtfully, "My krantt offers useful lessons. Heh. No one will ever be able to use Massani's trick on me again."

Shepard sighed and left the room with one last scowl at Jack.

She stepped through the door of the starboard cargo hold to find Zaeed leaning over his weapons bench meticulously cleaning his knife. "A weapon's only as good as its care," he said absent-mindedly as she settled against his surveillance table. 

"So, that's all I get?" Shepard asked.

"I don't know. I guess it depends on how much you want," Zaeed said. He looked up at her with a leer to his lips that had become commonplace.

Shepard straightened her back. "You just kneecapped Grunt because he accidentally insulted you. So right now, I'm thinking I want you to stow the attitude and give me a real explanation."

"He didn't insult me." He shrugged an inch. "He insulted her."

"Your mother."

Zaeed turned back to the bench and set down the cleaning rag. "You’re the one asked me to train him. The whelp needs lines. Boundaries."

"And threatening to peel back someone's scalp is the right way to set boundaries."

"It is for a krogan," Zaeed said with a raised eyebrow and a small grin.

Shepard felt the corner of her mouth turn up against her will, but she didn't fall for the distraction. "Apparently he's not the only one around here who needs to learn boundaries. You're not running this show, Massani. You're on my crew. And my crew members don't threaten to kill each other."

"We threaten to kill each other all the time, Shepard. I have it on good authority that Jack threatened to kill that dark haired biotic bitch just the other day. Hell, Vakarian threatened to kill me last week over a game of Skyllian Five."

"Fine. We don't threaten to kill each other without good reason. Out with it."

He grabbed the collar of his armor and shifted it uncomfortably. "Just don't like anyone talking about my mum." 

Shepard leaned back on one hip. "Seemed like it was a little bit bigger than that. So.” She waved him on. “Tell me."

He narrowed his eyes at her, took a few deep breaths before setting his mouth in decision. "Goddamn saint, just like I said." He looked down and busied himself at the bench while he spoke. "Took in all the little local brats while their mothers worked, whether they could pay her or not. Catholic as St. Francis himself. Mass every week. Prayers every night. Rosary. Confession. The whole bit."

"You grew up with her?"

"Don't sound so surprised. I didn't sprout from a beanstalk with assault rifle in hand." 

"I didn't mean it like that. I just figured—"

"You just figured a grizzled old bastard like me didn't come from the soft side of life. That rage. Starts early for most." Zaeed turned from the work table to lean back and stare at her. "I could say the same for you, you know. Press vids always painted the perfect colony kid life. But nobody lives through a batarian raid without survival instincts that are solid as hell. I’m betting yours got sharp before that ship ever touched ground.” He leaned toward her for the kill. “So, why don’t you tell me about your folks?" 

Shepard went cold. "I should go."

"No, wait,” he softened. “You don't have to.” He put out an appeasing hand and scowled at himself. “That was dirty pool. Just been a long time since I thought about her. Flipped a switch, I guess."

"That's a hell of a switch."

"She died when I was nine," he said, fast, as if were afraid he'd lose the nerve. "Picked up a flu from one of the moppets. We couldn't afford the medicine. No one came ‘round to help. Not worth the risk. Everyone looked after their own first. I understood it. Didn’t stop me from hating them. Hated the whole goddamn world."

Zaeed gazed past Shepard, out the window at the stars and rubbed a hand across the back of his head. "First time I ever stole, she was dying. Didn't know it then. Not yet. Snatched some radishes off a vendor's cart and tried to make her soup. Didn't know the first bloody thing about cooking. She always took care of all that. Just heated up some water and dropped them in." 

His lips turned up at the memory. "She tasted it and thanked me and told me next time, it'd be more fun if we did it together. I took a sip when she wasn’t looking. It was bloody awful.”  
He laughed quietly. “She’d say damn near anything to make me smile." 

Shepard felt lulled by the warm nostalgia in his voice. 

"She passed not long after. But that's how she was. Everyone else first, always."

"What happened to you after she died?" She kept her voice low, but devoid of pity. She'd rarely met anyone interesting who didn't have a lifetime of small tragedies at their backs.

"Nuns tried to cart me off to a boys' home. Like I’d live anywhere devoted to the bastard that let her die. He never answered my goddamn prayers, that's for sure. So, I took to the streets, took a new name. Learned a trade." He picked up the knife, studied the light gliding across the blade, then set it back down. "Looked after myself. Most of the rest you probably already know. Never dreamed I’d be doing something this big."

Shepard wondered why he told her all this. Why anyone would tell her anything at all when she offered so little of herself. "Burden of command," Anderson always said. To know and not be known. To love your troops and lose them. To make them loyal, feed them table scraps dressed up like intimacy. It occurred to her that Zaeed must have felt something like it when he was in command. 

“After the Blue Suns, when you were freelancing alone, nobody else to worry about,” Shepard hesitated, trying to think her way around what she really wanted to ask. “Did you ever feel—”

“Relieved?”

“Yeah,” she said, grateful he’d managed to follow her thoughts.

“God, yes.” Zaeed huffed. “Mad as hell. Hurt. Lost. But, yeah. Free. Feeling that weight, lives on your shoulders, it bears down. Changes something inside. But I don’t have to tell you about that, do I?”

“Guess not.”

“I’m sorry,” he said, almost bashful. He pointed a thumb back toward the shuttle bay. “All that, back there. Got more than enough on your plate without me messing about. Should’ve controlled myself.”

“Zaeed Massani and self-control, huh?”

“Oh, I know all about the benefits of delayed gratification,” he purred, in a deeper voice. A voice much too intimate for mess hall jokes and another cup of coffee. “Might surprise you, Shepard.”

“You surprise me all the time.” They caught each other’s glances, and held. She expected a smug look then, not the rosy tint she noticed rising along the lines of his throat as he ducked his head. And it occurred to her for the first time that Zaeed Massani’s flirting might not be quite as false as she’d thought. 

“Same here,” he confessed to the floor. “And I shouldn’t have pushed you about your past, before. Not my place to take something you’re not ready to give.”

“How did you know?” she wondered. “About what my life was like on Mindoir?” Just asking the question felt like stripping in front of a stranger. He hadn’t been lying to her, she could tell. He’d seen the vague outline of her past somehow. But by asking, Shepard was admitting that he’d guessed right. The difference between stolen peeks behind the curtain and full frontal.

He stepped over to her side of the room and leaned against the table beside her. Close, but not touching. Sharing the same view of nothing very important on the opposite wall. Not looking at her. And she recognized he was doing it for her benefit, so she wouldn’t feel as splayed. Zaeed, using subtle interpersonal skills. Another surprise.

“Your instincts, for one. You read people, know what buttons to push. When to step in, when to move back. How to get your way in a pinch.” He raised a hand when he saw her open her mouth from the corner of his eye. “I’m not criticizing. Comes in goddamn handy. But, sometimes, watching you handle people. It’s like it’s been honed the hard way.”

Shepard gnawed her lip, but stayed silent.

“And what little I could dig up in your past said you didn’t survive that raid by hiding. They caught you, and you escaped. All the luck in the goddam galaxy couldn’t have helped you pull that off. But experience with dangerous people could, if a person was smart enough to learn from it.”

“There are a lot of dangerous people out there. Doesn’t have to be family.”

“No. But then, there’s what you said to Grunt today.”

He still didn’t look her in the eye, even as she turned to search his face. “For many humans, parents teach values. Just, the way you said it.” He waved a hand. “For many, but maybe not you.”

“I see.” Shepard didn’t realize she’d been gripping the edges of the table behind her with white knuckles until she forced herself to let go. “I really do need to get back to my rounds. Miranda will want a full debrief on the… defensive maneuvers training?”

Zaeed shrugged in assent. “Works for me.” 

She took a step toward the door, but slower than she wanted. Slower than she should have. Like part of her was still finding reasons to stay. She realized Zaeed would notice. She had a feeling she’d have to be a lot more mindful of all the little things he noticed from now on. 

“You should come visit down here more often,” he said in a rush.

She glanced at his face, but he was already looking away.

“And why is that?” she asked slowly, unmoored.

“Don’t make anything of it. Just,” he shifted on his feet. “My opinion of you as commander is goddamn bedrock. And it only changes based on what you do in the field; not what you tell me down here.” He studied a line in the floor panel. “So. If you ever need to talk. You could with me. If you wanted. That’s all I’m saying. Door’s open. Anytime.”

The strange glimpse of possibility in the anxious set of his shoulders filled her stomach like hard liquor. Fluid. Inviting. But it burned.

“Zaeed. Why did you tell me about your mother?”

“Dunno, really.” He gave her a lopsided smile, breathtaking in its abrupt gentleness. “Felt good to think about her. Remember her. Think you might be the first person who ever actually asked. Or at least, the first person in a very long time who cared.”

Too much. Whatever it was, this was too much. The softness that threatened to pass between them was broken as Shepard stiffened up, consciously wrenching free from the gravity in his eyes. 

“I’ll want you and Grunt on the next ground team,” she commanded, pulling the armor of business back on. 

“Yeah,” he said gruffly. He read the change immediately, straightened back to battlefield height. “Of course.”

She nodded once, firmly, as she left the room.

The moment the elevator doors closed behind her, she sagged against the far wall and ran a hand across face, suddenly feeling uncertain and unsettled, and seen.


	8. Herald

“I think I’m gonna fuck Massani,” Jack called, over the low thrum of their mass effect fields.

The crate Shepard had been practicing lifting for the past hour fell to the floor of the shuttle bay with an offended clack.

“You what?”

Jack grinned ferally at the box Shepard dropped before repeating herself. “Massani. Gonna fuck him.” She set her own crate down lightly in the corner. 

Shepard felt the frown form before she could pull her muscles back in line. “Why?”

Jack shrugged a shoulder across the room. “Need to get laid. And there’s only three types of men on this boat: aliens, Cerberus assholes, and Massani.”

“Please tell me that’s the line you’re gonna use.” Shepard let out a small laugh despite herself.

“Shit. You really think I’ll need a line?” Jack cocked her head.

“How, exactly, did you plan on bringing it up?”

“I dunno. Show him my tits. Ask him if he wants to fuck.”

“Actually, that might work.”

“Always does.”

Jack walked over to the stash of protein bars they’d brought down and tossed Shepard one. 

“But, Zaeed? Really?”

“What?” Jack pulled off the wrapper and tore a bite from the bar. “You really never thought about it?”

“He’s a little old for you, don’t you think?”

“Nah. I like a little mileage on ‘em,” Jack said through a full mouth. “Less hang-ups. More stamina. I mean, you’ve seen him in the field right? The man never runs out of steam.” Jack pointed the bar at Shepard. “Plus, he’s good with his hands.”

Shepard peeled at her wrapper uncomfortably while Jack said things that Shepard had only let herself think in the dead quiet between restless dreams. Jack didn’t let Shepard’s silence stop her.

“Plus, you ever seen him without the armor?” Jack’s eyes gleamed. “He’s pretty stacked for an old guy.”

“And that’s all it takes?”

“Well, yeah. What else you want?” Jack’s face screwed up, puzzled. 

“I don’t know, Jack. Maybe at least a little emotional connection?”

“Massani’s cool.” Which may have been the highest praise Shepard had ever heard Jack offer.

Shepard cocked back on her hip and waited.

“What?” Jack squirmed. “He got me a heat sink mod for my shotgun. Left it in my bunk. After Pragia.”

“How do you know it was him?”

“Who else would it be, you know? I tried to give it back to him later. Told him I didn’t want his pity or any of that pansy ass bullshit. He said if I was gonna be watching your back, I’d better take whatever help I could get.”

“Ah, young love.”

“It’s not like that.” Jack pulled her chin down to her chest and studied the floor. “Maybe I just don’t like owing anybody.”

“You can do whatever you want in your free time.” Shepard turned back to lifting her crate, raised it a little too high, a little too fast, then got it back under control. “But whatever you do in your bunk, you don’t let it affect the team.”

“You got it.”

***

“Alright, I told her. Now, hand over the goods,” Jack demanded.

“Fine, fine.” Joker held out the game nodule as Jack flopped down into the co-pilot’s seat beside him. “One copy of Intergalactic Blackjack, Version 5.7. You could’ve just downloaded that over the extranet like a normal person. You know that, right?”

“Shows what you know. That’s how they get you,” she said dismissively. “So. You get what you needed?”

“Yeah. Everything’s recorded. I’ll look at it later. Didn’t want to risk getting caught.”

“Thought the A.I. keeps track of where Shepard is.”

“And that would be really helpful and all,” he muttered, glaring at the console, “If I could actually trust it.”

“Anyway, it’s done. Now, spill. Why’d you want me to tell her I was gonna fuck Massani?”

“It’s nothing important.”

“Bullshit. What are you up to?”

“It’s just this bet I have going with Garrus.”

“What kind of bet?” Jack folded her legs under so she could gain height on him.

“I don’t mean to be rude or anything, but it’s kind of not your business.”

Jack grabbed his arm, voice low in her throat. “Well, maybe you made it my business when you roped me into this, you little weasel.”

“Fine,” he yelped, holding up his hands. “Full disclosure. Garrus thinks Shepard and Zaeed might have a thing.”

“What do you mean?” Jack let go of Joker’s uniform and lounged back. “What kind of thing?”

“You know,” he waggled his eyebrows. “A thing.”

“The fuck gave Garrus that idea?”

“Look, I thought it was lame too. Hence, the bet. But I gotta admit it makes a weird kind of sense when you think about it. They’ve both commanded squads before, right? They’re both smart. They hate standard by-the-book rules and regs stuff. Then they both have this hard exterior, see, but when you actually get to know them, they’re kind of like marshmallows. I don’t mean in a soft way. But like—”

“I get what you fucking mean,” Jack interrupted. “One big hitch in your theory, pint-size. Shepard saves people cause she’s a fucking girl scout. You tell her there’s a puppy in a well, and she’d jump in before you gave her a fucking rope. Massani’s a merc. And merc’s don’t get out of bed unless they get paid.”

“Yeah, well, that’s what I told Garrus.”

“And? What’d he say?”

“He said maybe Shepard could use somebody to remind her to look out for herself once in a while.”

Jack looked thoughtful. “Hot damn. I guess that explains it.”

“Explains what?”

“Why Massani wouldn’t fuck me.”

“What the—” Joker sputtered. “You do realize you were only supposed to tell Shepard that, right? Not actually do it.” 

“Guess when I was telling her about him, I kinda talked myself into it.”

“You talked yourself into it.”

“That’s what I just fucking said.”

“Ok. And… what did he do?”

“I just told you. He said no.”

Joker widened his eyes. “Now, that is interesting.”

“Said I wouldn’t respect him in the morning,” Jack scoffed. “Can you believe that? Motherfucker was right. But still.”

Joker dropped his head back against the seat and groaned.

“What?”

“I totally owe Garrus a hundred credits.”

***

A few hours later, Shepard walked into the shuttle bay to the sounds of heavy breathing.

Across the room, Zaeed bench pressed weight with a single-minded fury. “Shepard,” he grunted out.

“Zaeed. Didn’t expect to find you here. Not alone, anyway.”

Zaeed set the weight back on the bar and sat up to glare at her. “Oh? And what the hell is that supposed to mean?”

Shepard raised a hand. “Nothing. Not my business.”

“Did you put the bald bitch up to this?”

“What do you mean?”

“What was it? Some sick joke to play on the old man? Some mind game for god knows what? Goddamn mission cohesion? Stress reli—”

“Zaeed.” Shepard’s voice fell like a wall between them. “Jack told me she was interested earlier. I figured she made a move. That’s all.”

“Right,” he sneered. “And you just assumed I’d take her up on it.”

“No shame in that,” she answered. “Everybody needs an outlet every once in a while.”

“Everybody?” He narrowed his eyes. “Even the Sainted Commander Shepard?”

She turned away from the piercing look, walked over and sat on the weight bench across from his.

“People have needs,” she dodged. “No strings attached sex? Plenty of people wouldn’t turn that down. Especially on a mission like this.”

Zaeed wore dark sweats and a tank top. He grabbed a towel from the floor, and Shepard watched as he wiped the sweat from his neck, drug the rough cloth across his broad shoulders. She swallowed.

“Guess I’m not like other people then,” he said. “Besides, she’s a goddamn child. She’s still down there in that goddamn jungle hole. Maybe she always will be.”

“I hope not.”

Zaeed’s voice was thoughtful, cautious. “Well, could be with you around, she’ll turn out alright. It’s amazing the effect that having someone who actually gives a damn can have on a person.”

And if there was any greater meaning there, Shepard fastidiously ignored it.

“Should have figured you’d like older women, anyway,” Shepard thumbed idly at the fraying seat, “Since pretty much all your romantic exploits seem to involve asari.” And this was fine. Just a normal conversation. The type you’d have with any fellow soldier over beers, or in the mess hall, or in bunks between shifts just shooting the breeze. She felt her heartbeat race while she waited for him to speak, then told herself that she didn’t.

“Nobody under a hundred, huh?” Shepard tried to keep her voice casual. Buddies. We’re all just buddies here.

Zaeed’s gaze lifted, traced her face. “Told you my last asari sold me out to the Blood Pack. Took me five years before I realized she wasn’t the right one. So, my past experiences haven’t exactly inclined me to stay blue, if that’s what you’re getting at.”

“Five years. You actually dated someone for five years.”

He dared her to deny it with a sharp cut of his eyes. “Funny that’s the part of the story you find so unbelievable.” 

“Why didn’t you kill her?” Shepard had wondered since the first time he’d told her. She hadn’t asked then. Hadn’t been close enough. Wasn’t sure why she thought they were close enough now. But she’d asked anyway.

“What are you on about?”

“You tracked Vido for twenty years to get your revenge. You dedicated your whole life to hunting him down. But the woman you’re dating sells you out to a merc group, and you, what? Just let her go? Walk away?”

“Vido betrayed me, then he twisted everything I’d ever built. Corrupted it. It was revenge, sure. But more than that. He had to be stopped. With A’rana. It was different. Like, a mutual parting. I guess. In a way. Just—complicated.”

“Sounds like a hell of a story. Maybe you could tell me sometime.”

“Not bloody likely.” Zaeed softened his words with a wry grin.

Shepard rested her weight on a palm. “Still. Age-wise. You obviously have a type.” She knew she was treading too deep. Why the hell should it matter why he turned Jack down?

“All depends,” he said slowly. “Once you’re all adults, age doesn’t make half as much difference as being on the same page. But, if we’re talking about my type…”

Zaeed leaned forward, elbows on his knees, watching her. When he spoke, his voice came slow, too silky and teasing for the casual tone she’d tried to strike. “Confident. Smart. Passionate. Woman who knows who she is. Knows her way around a rifle. Knows when to put me in my goddamn place. And when she sinks her teeth into something, she won’t let anything in the galaxy stand in her way. Nothing as sexy as that,” he said. 

“Like your asari girlfriend?” 

Zaeed chuckled lightly. “Oh, she always went after what she wanted, alright. Just turned out it wasn’t me. All worked out in the end though.”

“You really think so?”

“Yeah, I do.” He paused, too much unspoken in the beats between their breaths. “Cause now I’m here with you.”

Shepard stared at the hands Zaeed placed carefully on his knees. Jack was right. Zaeed always knew what to do with his hands. Her fingers itched to trace the bones of his knuckles, to feel the shape of his rough fingers under her skin.

“What’s your type, then?” he asked.

“I’m not sure I have one.”

“Come on. I showed you mine."

It occurred to her she had no idea how to answer him. A decade of casual encounters and one or two aborted efforts at something more had left Shepard with little guidance on what she looked for in a man. What did she actually want? She wanted to save everyone. Everyone. Everything else came second. The lines around Shepard’s eyes tightened. Strategic retreat. Zaeed must have seen something of it in her face. She watched the echoing withdrawal in his own. 

“Never mind. Doesn’t matter.” He pursed his lips, set his hands behind him and sprawled his legs, then took a long, appraising look. “Everything I’ve done, everyone I’ve lost, it really did work out for the best, you know.” 

“Really.” Shepard tried to inject a teasing note, immensely grateful he’d let her off the hook.

“Yeah. With you, I’ve got a chance to save the whole goddamn galaxy. Better believe A’rana never gave me a shot like that,” he said. 

His gentle grin spread, and Shepard felt a matching one touch her face, right down to the slight wistfulness that creased the edges of his eyes. She took the return to benign waters in stride. But she felt like maybe she was starting to get an idea of what she wanted, a vague notion buried deep, waiting to be unearthed on a desperate, terminally undefined some day.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’m sorry for the delay in posts. I hit a total creative wall. This chapter and the next two have been giving me fits. I'm still not satisfied. But my husband finally told me, “Just start writing something. Even if it’s completely different. Just write something to write,” which, coupled with all the kind reviews I’ve had, is probably the only thing that got me going again. Thank you to everyone who’s still reading and commenting. It really means a lot to me.


	9. Ideal

Horizon was a cluster fuck.  Sticky sweat drying on his skin as he stepped through the shuttle door after the fight.  Acrid tang of smoke still coating his tongue.  Utterly miserable, for the lot of them. 

But for her, worst of all. 

It wasn’t her reaction that gave her away. It was the lack of it that set his teeth on edge.  She cut a path for the shuttle. All business.  No lag. No limp.  She settled in her jump-seat beside him and belted in, started itemizing damages and mission implications without stutter or slouch. 

Garrus seethed, a black ball of quiet rage from the pilot's seat.  Shepard didn’t seem to notice.  

So Zaeed played along.  Cause that's what she needed.  Played like they didn't just bathe in nightmare fuel.  Played like he didn't want to take the Alliance pretty boy's shoulders and shake until perfect teeth rattle. He played.

Shepard clapped a hand on Zaeed's shoulder when they disembarked the shuttle, like always.  Job well done. Go team. Rah bloody rah.

Exactly like every other mission.  And that's what was so goddamn wrong about it.  They watched half a colony sucked away beneath their fingertips.  They fought a fucking demon, the bogeyman of fucking fairy tales, and it knows her by fucking name.  She stood stock still while a boy who claimed to have loved her did everything short of spit on her bloody grave.

So, with every deliberately unaffected step she took, he worried more.  

"Get a drink with me," he tried. 

Garrus had stormed out. Coast was clear.  Not quite an offer.  Not quite an order.  But enough to make her still at the elevator.  Waiting.  He wasn’t sure for what.  "Get a drink with me,” he said again, “And I swear to Christ we don't have to talk about this awful goddamn day."

A slow turn of her lips, almost unnoticeable.  But he'd spent a lot of time learning what was worth noticing with her.  The wall cracked.  She gave.  Just a bit.  Just a trickle.   Felt like a flood, though, coming from her.

"Alright, Massani.  You're on."

“Bottle of whiskey. Meet back here? After we’ve both scoured off the rot?”

Shepard was quiet. But he read a world in her firm nod and the subtle softening of her shoulders.  

If there was anything Zaeed understood, it was the desire to hide from the one thing you most needed to say.

***

“You’re really not going to tell me why you won’t take it,” A’rana huffed, peering at him over the edge of her linton tea. 

“I’ve already told you. Job’s not worth it.” Zaeed was tired of this argument. So goddamn tired. He shrugged out of his armor one piece at a time and carefully hung it in the weapons locker.

Their rented villa was small, but tidy, and over the last six months of working private security for the Pyrena Corporation, it had almost started to feel like home. The money was good. They lived just outside the capital city. A broad veranda with a cliff-side view. A shitty cliff, granted. But still. A’rana by his side. Zaeed thought it might be the longest he’d stayed planet-side since he was a child. 

“Routed that pack of vorcha out of the east end today,” he said. He traded his under-suit for some jeans and a soft black shirt before sinking onto the couch beside her with a sigh. “Bastards gave us a run for our money. But Florentina caught two on her own with a double pull. For a human, the girl packs a wallop.”

“Stop changing the subject,” A’rana replied smoothly. “This score could nab us more than double what you’re making here in half the time. Maybe triple. Why won’t you take it, Zaeed?”

He took one of her feet in his hands and began to rub it. “Maybe I like it here.”

“It’s Garvug,” she wheedled. “No one likes it here.”

“Yeah, well, we can’t put together enough men to pull a job that big.”

“It’s a simple snatch and grab. We’ve done far more with less.”

Bloody stubborn woman. 

“Not like this,” he insisted. “He’s too well defended.”

“No better defended than Silon. Or Pava’ish. Or a half-dozen other targets you’ve brought down.” A’rana pulled her foot away and sat up to lean a shoulder against his. 

“You’re worried about the collateral,” she said softly. “Again.”

“It’s not that. It’s just, this mission, it’s dirtier than I’d like. Told you. Too risky.”

“But the mission on Demeter wasn’t? Or Halageuse?” she demanded. “By the goddess, do you think I’m a fool? The only thing that makes it any different is that we’d risk casualties in the middle of a civilian population.”

“Civilians bring complications,” he insisted. “Complications increase the heat. Which requires more men. It’s not worth it.” 

“And that’s really the only reason? The fact that we’d be catching and returning an escaped slave has nothing to do with it? Or is that just another practical ‘complication’ for you? How long do you intend to keep pretending your choices are only about the money?” A’rana set her tea down, then lifted a demure hand up to his cheek and turned his face toward her, rubbing it lightly. “Zaeed. Tell me the truth.”

He pulled his face away awkwardly. “Don’t know what you’re on about.”

“You do.” She drew her hand down, palm flat against his neck, then down to his chest, as he felt her eyes scraping over him. “We’ve had some good years, Zaeed. Better than I imagined. But I’ve let this, this distance between us, go on as long as I’m willing. I’ve been respectful. I stop looking anywhere you don’t want me to. But this won’t work anymore. Not if you keep hiding who you really are from me.”

He shifted and cleared his throat, rubbed a weak hand down his thigh. “So. That an ultimatum, then?”

“I’m close to the matron stage. I can’t keep thinking as a child. And I can never fully commit to you if I can’t see all that you are,” she said simply. “I have to know. I have to know you before I choose.”

“Guess I’ll take that as a yes.” He let out a shaky breath. “And then what? If you don’t like what you see?”

“It’s a risk we both take,” she murmured, pressing full lips against his ear and full breasts against his chest as she moved to straddle him. “Let me in. Please. Embrace eternity with me. Completely.”

Risks. Acceptable losses. Hadn’t his whole life always come down to that?

“Don’t hold back,” she whispered. “Just this once.”

Losing her, now, after everything. That was unacceptable to him. 

It was different. The same, but so different from all the times before. From anything he’d ever had. She was kinder, gentler. Generous. More generous than she’d ever been. Giving him all of her safety, every ounce of warmth he’d never dared to admit that he wanted from her. Memory after memory flashed before him. Her pride standing beside him after a perfectly placed shot. The sense of victory she felt the first time he placed his hand in hers on a tabletop. Her passion for him on nights with only flesh between them, pulsing to their own beat in the depth of space. Every tender feeling she'd ever had for him. She drowned him in it.

And somewhere in the night, her softness broke him. A lifetime of hardness cracked open until he found himself showing her everything. Giving her everything. His hopes. His dreams. His fears. His love. And he told her. Over and over again in moans against her skin, he told her. She never said it back. But that was alright. Because she had shown him, hadn’t she?

In the morning light, he woke, dazed and bleary eyed, hungry for more. There was no question things had changed. Profoundly. Irrevocably. No more pretending. The weight of a lifetime lifted off his back. Since his mother died, he'd never had anyone in his life that he could show his whole self. No one who had seen all of him and loved him anyway.

The ping from his omni-tool brought him fully awake. Made him aware that the bed beside him had grown cold. 

_I need you on a job. Light-Gen Pharmaceutical Factory at 0800. Meet me. --Arana_

If part of him was disappointed that she’d crept off before dawn after what they’d shared, he pushed it down in the place where most of his disappointments hid. She was a pragmatist, above all, always. It was one of the things that drew him to her. If she had a good lead, of course she’d follow it.

Even as he stood at the entrance to the factory, alone, surrounded by three fully armed and armored krogan, it took him a moment to process that he’d been led into a trap. 

“Massani,” the largest krogan greeted him. 

“Kalvak,” Zaeed nodded back. They’d never worked together, but they’d traveled in similar circles for years. He respected the hell out of the old bastard.

“No hard feelings,” Kalvak assured him. “Vido’s money will keep my crew fed for a year.”

“Only a year?” Zaeed laughed. “Sounds like you should go on a diet.” He smiled as he counted his options, which were bad. And his odds, which were worse. 

His omni-tool beeped, and Zaeed glanced up at Kalvak and raised his eyebrows. “A little professional courtesy?”

“Sure,” Kalvak gestured. “Won’t make much difference now.”

Zaeed pulled up the message and read it. 

_No Mercy._

Unidentified Sender.

A command? An explanation? Either way, the implications were clear enough. She’d goaded him into showing her everything, all while hoping there wasn’t more. Hoping he was exactly as cold and brutal as he’d spent a lifetime pretending to be. The full force of the truth struck him, sticking to him like the gun at his hip and the blade at his side. If A’rana was capable of loving any part of him, it wasn’t his depth, no hidden kindness or morality. It was his surface. Rage and violence. Warrior. 

Professional.

So Zaeed gave the gathered krogan a feral grin. And then he went to work.

***

All over the galaxy, he’d heard tell about krogan quads. Mostly from people who'd never seen one except on the extranet. What people didn't often talk about is how hard it is to actually cut a krogan's bollocks off. The few who knew, and he hadn't run into many, would tell you it's nigh impossible without a good omni blade, at the very least. Too much protective covering. Muscle and flesh almost as hard as bone.

Now, after dispatching Kalvak and his men, Zaeed knew better. 

He knew you could get them out with a steel blade, if it's strong enough, and sharp enough. And if you have enough time. And if you're particularly goddamn motivated.

Which he was. 

Despite his wounds. Despite the breath that felt like it was being fed to him through a broken paper bag. He plunged the dispenser on the medi-gel over and over until it ran dry. Hour after hour, he crouched alone in the abandoned warehouse, hacking away at the old krogan's sack. Over 900 years on the bastard, if memory served. A quad like that, in the right markets, could go for more credits than Zaeed had earned in the past six months. And he knew the right markets. 

But that wasn’t what this was about. These were for her. Proof.

With each new rip, he thought up another note to send with them. Maybe, "Better luck next time, bitch." Or just, "I hope you choke on them." By the time he’d finally finished ripping out the third testicle, he was particularly fond of, “You can use these to go fuck yourself." But no matter how bitter and vulgar the imagined messages became, his pride told him they all really meant the same thing. 

_I am what you wanted. Take me back. God. Please, take me back._

And the worst part was, he believed she would. As long as he could assure her that this, this shell of channeled fear and fury, was all he’d ever allow himself to be. This. And nothing more.

In the end, he wore himself out, ground down the hate and rage and pain along with the skin and carapace and grizzled sinew. Stared at the mess. Began to laugh. Softly, at first. Then long and hard.

The absurdity of what he’d been doing hit home. 

It was over. Just over.

He picked himself up and staggered toward the door without his trophies. Knew he’d never send them. 

He’d never see her again. He could find her. If he wanted. He was Zaeed Goddamn Massani. Best bounty hunter in the Terminus Systems. Of course, he could find her.

But it would only delay the inevitable. And he was far too hard to let a woman break him now. 

Later, as he gathered his belongings from the now too-quiet apartment, he told himself that she didn't leave him because he was weak. She left him because she didn't like the ways he was strong. By the time he’d chartered a ship off planet, he’d even started to let himself believe it. A bit.

And that—he was pretty sure he could live with that. 

Because he liked himself just fine.

***

They’d nearly finished the bottle, mostly silent, side by side with backs propped against a shuttle bay crate, when Shepard finally breathed out the last of the day’s stiffness.

Zaeed celebrated its departure with a large swallow, then carefully placed the bottle back in her outstretched hand.

“Kaidan. He’s a good officer,” she announced, watching the brown liquid tilt back and forth across the bottom of the bottle. “One of the best.”

“Sure,” he said, carefully neutral. Relieved she’d been the one to bring it up. He’d sidestepped bigger elephants than this, but it had been a good long goddamn while.

“Everything by the book.”

“Yeah, I got that.”

“Of course you did,” she said with a thick laugh. She leaned a shoulder a little too heavy against his own. “Because you see everything, don’t you?”

“Did you love him?”

“What?” Her eyes, whiskey-wet but wide.

“The pretty boy. Did you love him?”

“That’s none of your business.”

“Suit yourself,” he grumbled. “But if we’re not sharing, then give me back my goddamn whiskey.”

“I didn’t,” she confessed lowly, while she stared into the bottle’s wavering reflection. “I wanted to. I think,” she admitted. “But I never let myself get close enough to love him. Maybe that’s what I feel so guilty about.”

“Don’t,” he said evenly. “He never really loved you.”

“You don’t know him at all.”

“I know what I heard.” He turned toward her, so close his breath parted strands of her hair. “Shepard, he said you betrayed everything you ever stood for. If he really thinks that, the boy doesn’t know you at all. He may be a solid bloke and a fine officer, but if he never knew you, that’s not real love.”

“Oh, yeah? What do you know about it, Massani?”

“Maybe nothing,” he huffed. “Just. I know a bit about choosing principles over people. You should be glad you found out before it went too far. You’ve got nothing to be ashamed of on that score.”

“Says the coldblooded mercenary.”

“Fine. You’re right,” he growled through clenched teeth. Started to prop himself up, preparing to leave. “Just, don’t beat yourself up about it, is all.”

“Zaeed, wait.” Shepard stood with him and laid gentle fingers on his arm. “This—this helped.”

“Told you before, Shepard,” he said gruffly. “Any time.”

She focused in on him then. Scoped and in the sightlines. God, her eyes were so deep. 

“You’re a good man, Zaeed.”

He frowned. Reared back. Braced. For the punchline? For the inevitable walk-back?

None came.

He cleared his throat. “Not—”

“You are.”

Then, slowly, slow enough to make his chest ache, she drew herself up and pressed sweet lips against his cheek.

Tomorrow, he’d tell himself it was the booze. Risk and reward. Unacceptable losses. He faced her and dared to press a calloused palm against her neck, rubbed a rough thumb against her jaw.

“Shepard, the boy had all the chances in the world, and he couldn't see what you're worth." He tilted forward to press a kiss to her forehead, then gently murmured, "He's a goddamn fool."

He strode from the room without looking to her for a reaction. 

Couldn’t bear whatever polite rejection her carefully managed expressions might hold.


	10. Jurisdiction

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNING for past child abuse referenced in this chapter.
> 
> Also, I’ll be switching to posting about every other week for a while. I think that'll be more manageable with my schedule. Posts should be on Sundays. Thanks again to everyone who's reading. I can't describe how meaningful the feedback has been.

“The injuries in these images are from ten years or so ago,” Doctor Henson said. The head of medical at Arcturus Station had at least sixty years of grey hair and wrinkles on him, if Anderson was judging him right. Surly and unflappable. The man tapped through the screens of his newest patient dispassionately. 

Badly healed breaks. From the fifteen-year-old girl laying in a hospital bed down the hall.

“Eight years ago.” 

Tap.

“Seven.” 

Tap.

“Five.”

Tap.

“Two. You get the idea.”

“Yeah. I guess I do.” Anderson rubbed a palm across his eyes. “You think it was the parents?”

“Normally is, with things like this. Any idea what happened to them?”

“Killed in the raid,” Anderson replied. “Same as everyone else.”

Henson grunted. “Too good for them, if you ask me.”

“Years.” Anderson stared dumbly. “And no one reported it? Teachers? Neighbors?”

“She had an excessive number of absences according to her school records. But no, no one reported it to any sort of authorities.” The old doctor gauged him beneath furrowed brows. “First time in the Traverse, huh?”

“Yes, it’s my first run out this far. Why?”

“Well, it’s not exactly the best and brightest of the galaxy settling out here if you know what I mean. Lot of them leave Earth specifically to get away from that kind of attention. Run things their own way without anyone looking over their shoulder. Little colony like this, people mind their own business. That’s how most of them like it.”

Anderson pulled one image up, probed it with his finger. “She’s been whipped. Badly.”

“Those are fresh.” The doctor tapped at a picture of a torn thigh. “Took a bullet when she went back for the others, too. Just a flesh wound, but she’s tough.”

“So, when is someone from social services going to get here?”

Henson’s scoff said more than his gravel-throated words. “You really are a virgin.”

“What do you mean?”

“She’s a colony kid. You’ve really never heard about this before?”

Anderson gave a quick shake of his head. “I’ve done most of my time running security on the inner planets. And since we’ve been out here, she’s the first hostage we’ve found. Alive, I mean.”

“Well, this one was under Mindoir’s jurisdiction, but with the raid, the colonial government’s pretty well shot to hell. No family. No friends. There’s nobody to left to come get her.”

“Earth, then.”

Henson leaned back against the table. His response smacked of bitter recitation. “Earthbound orphanages only take planetary citizens or Alliance personnel. They can’t afford to legitimize any of the Traverse colonies as long as the council opposes human expansion. On the record, all colonists are currently classified as illegal emigrants. You realize I wouldn’t even be allowed to treat her if she hadn’t come in from an Alliance rescue mission, right?”

“What the hell are we supposed to do with her then? We can’t keep her on the ship.”

“You could try shopping her around the station. There’s always a few couples looking for a kid.” Henson slowly flipped through more pages on the pad. Pulled up one of Shepard’s beaten face. Casually set the pad down on the table between them.

“I will not sell this child,” Anderson growled.

The doctor flapped a calming hand. “You’d be lucky to sell her to one of them. Nice farming couple looking for a kid, extra pair of hands to help out around the house or in the fields. Not a bad life, all things considered. Trouble is, she’s too old for anyone to take her. They mostly like the cute ones. As is, I’d say her best bet is the Citadel.”

“What do you mean?” Anderson turned from the broken eyes accusing him from the datapad. “The council can barely stomach it when we dock there for repairs. I doubt they’d just welcome a human orphan with open arms.”

“Of course not. But sometimes kids just wander off-ship, you know.” The doctor leaned a hip against the table and folded his arms.

“She’d be homeless.”

“Like I said, she’s tough. And tough kids always find work on the Citadel. One way or another. Hell of a lot better than Nos Astra or Omega, anyway. What else are you gonna do?”

”I don’t know yet. But I’ll think of something. I didn’t save this child just to see her end up out on the streets,” Anderson said fiercely. 

At that, the doctor turned and tugged a personal PDA from his inner coat pocket. “You know, I was kinda hoping you’d say that.” He pulled up a brochure and slowly pushed it in Anderson’s direction.

As Anderson took the pad, he watched the angry angles of Henson’s face shift—altered by the glow of carefully managed hope.

***

David Anderson  
to Steven Hackett  
URGENT REQUEST

Admiral Hackett,

Congratulations on the promotion. Sorry this message was so long in coming. I’ve been in the Traverse, which probably comes as no surprise to you. 

You know I’m not the type for social calls, so I’ll get right to it.

I found an orphan here—sole survivor of Mindoir. I don’t have to tell you it was bad. She’s fifteen, and the staff on Arcturus tells me no one will take her.

I’m attaching her medical and school records, as well as the after-action report from our raid on the slaver vessel. 

I’d like to think you have an eye for talent. 

She’s got it.

I’m also attaching a brochure for the United Alliance Preparatory Academy. They can’t accept her without a valid citizenship I.D. At least that’s what they tell me. But I get the feeling they may be willing to make a policy exception if the up-front tuition comes with some extra padding. You know how these things go.

I can swing the room and board fees and take legal guardianship of her. 

But I can’t make the tuition. Not on my salary.

So, I’m asking. Can you pull any strings?

\--Anderson

***

“Better be making plenty of credits on this one,” Zaeed grumbled as Hackett sat a short distance away on the park bench. “I rejected a very lucrative offer to take this meet.”

“You never seem to be at a lack for work.” Hackett leaned against the bench and kicked his feet back, pretending to admire the cherry blossoms drifting to ground around them. 

“Wasn’t work," Zaeed leered back. "Was a woman."

Hackett was a study in immobility, as usual.

“I need 400,000 credits transferred to a dummy account. Then I need a deposit made, anonymously, to another new account. Then a discreet untraceable message to this man telling him where to find the money.”

Zaeed frowned at the datapad Hackett slid across the bench to him, then back at Hackett. “If you’ve got someone blackmailing you, you could just tell me, you know. For that much cash, I’d solve your problem a lot more permanently.”

“That’s not what this is,” Hackett answered smoothly. “In the message, tell him it’s an anonymous scholarship donation for a non-citizen student. He’ll be getting the application shortly.”

A quick extranet search of the recipient had Zaeed letting out a low whistle. “Alliance Prep Headmaster? You father a bastard out there you don’t want anyone knowing about? Sly dog. Wouldn’t have pegged you for the type.”

“I’m not. And I told you this needs to be discreet.”

“Yeah, but you know the deal. You expect me to take a job without asking any questions, costs extra. How much of this is my cut, anyway?”

“I was actually hoping you’d take this one on for free.”

Zaeed laughed. “You’ve been spending too much time planet-side, Admiral.” He added a faintly mocking drawl to the last word. “It’s gone to your head. We’re not all vacuous self-sacrificing automatons out here.”

“The student’s a raid orphan.”

“Not my problem.” Zaeed sniffed and eased back.

“Maybe not. Or maybe the raid would never have happened if you hadn’t lost the Suns.”

“You goddamn bastard.” Zaeed’s voice was low, more bitterness than anger chipping away at the edges.

“It’s getting worse every day, and you know it.” Hackett cut his eyes to the side, finally taking Zaeed in. “You can wallow in booze and guilt while another kid gets cut loose in the Terminus because of your mistakes, or you can take this one on for free. Maybe even sleep a little better tonight.”

“Don’t feel guilty.” Zaeed glared around the manufactured park petulantly. “Don’t feel anything.”

“Whatever you say.” Hackett waved a stiff hand. “But it’s a good investment. No risk. Moving some money around quietly for bureaucrats. You could do it in your sleep. And I’d owe you a favor.”

“Next job on the Alliance tab, you make sure it’s a good one. And I’m charging double.”

“Deal.”

***

Steven Hackett  
to David Anderson  
RE: URGENT REQUEST

Anderson,

Having you as a guardian will be bad enough. If word gets out that an Admiral’s paying her way, she’ll be dogged by nepotism accusations the rest of her military career. Not to mention, I’ve got more than a few political enemies she’d inherit.

She’d never rise higher than Lieutenant, and you know it.

If you want her to have any chance at success, I can’t have any hand in this.

But I think there’s a new scholarship program for non-citizens. You should reference it in her application letter.

Good luck,

Hackett

***

Anderson approached the dark eyed girl in the bed slowly, stiffly. She met his gaze and jutted her sharp chin.

“I’m ready,” she said. The skin around her eyes was drawn. Her muscles taut. But her voice didn’t shake.

“Ready?” he asked.

“Whatever you’re gonna do to me.” 

He stopped mid-step. “I’m sorry. I don’t understand what you mean.”

She cocked her head at that. Her bruised brows turned down. “I got them all killed,” she said. 

“Who?”

“The other people on the ship. I got loose, and I hid. I tried to come back to help when I heard the gunfire start, but it was too late. They killed them all because I got loose,” she said quietly.

Dear god. 

Anderson sat on the edge of her bed, gently, pretending not to notice the flinch as her muscles pulled back from him under starched sheets.

“It wasn’t you,” he said quickly, sternly, brooking no argument. “It was us. It’s protocol. Hegemony orders. Batarian slavers kill all captives before they’re boarded. They’re worried that any survivors would only come back to form more colonies in contested space. Do you understand?”

Shepard chewed the inside of her lip, considering. “You knew that? Before your men boarded the ship?”

She was quick, alright. 

He summoned his gumption and met her eyes. “We weren’t certain they’d managed to take anyone alive in the first place. But, yes. We knew that before we boarded the ship.”

“And you did it anyway,” she pressed.

“We were under orders not to allow them to escape under any circumstances.” What a poor explanation to offer for wholesale slaughter.

She caught his eyes with a hard look, made harder by the gaunt jaw and solemn brow. 

“You should have found a better way,” she said. No recrimination. Just fact. 

And Anderson could only nod.

***

“Give me a minute,” Shepard grunted as she pulled up her omni-tool. “Just need to finish uploading this data pack to Hackett.”

“Hackett?” Zaeed raised an eyebrow as he stepped behind her to lean against the doorframe.

“Yeah.” Shepard spared him a glance across her shoulder.

"I don't believe it." He made a sound that crossed from frustration to amusement before mumbling, “All makes sense now.”

“What?” 

“You were the goddamn competition.”

That got him her full attention. She faced him across the ruins of the room. Formerly a Blue Suns Base. Formerly a dig site for the brave and foolish souls curious enough to risk pirates and persecution for some high-minded notions of scientific discovery. Zaeed spat dust out of the side of his mouth.

“Am I supposed to be following this?” Shepard asked.

“About three years ago, work started drying up. At least the Alliance-shaped kind. Drove myself to distraction trying to figure out who moved in on my territory. But all that time, it was you, wasn’t it? You took over as Hackett’s errand boy.”

“I’m pretty sure I should be offended by that somehow.”

“Don’t be. If I had to lose, at least I lost to the best.” He lifted his lips as an appreciative gleam filled his eyes. “That whole bloody year. No wonder he didn’t need me. No way to underbid free labor.” Then he chuckled. “So, what’s the old man got on you, anyway?”

“What do you mean?”

“Terrorists. Mercs. Overrun mining facilities in the middle of nowhere.” He waved a broad arm to indicate the burned-out room around them. “Bit below your pay grade, wasn’t it? Even then. You were the first human Spectre, chasing down Saren Goddamn Arterius. Pretty sure you had better things to do than the grand Admirals’ grunt work. Hell, he’s not even in your chain of command anymore, and you’re still doing it. At least I got fucking paid. What’s your excuse?”

“It’s never been about that.”

“So, enlighten me, then. What’s it about?”

“Look around you.” Shepard’s eyes flitted over broken footlockers and scattered sheets. “This room was full of people before the Suns took this base. Just ordinary people trying to learn a little and make a living and get some sleep at the end of the day. Everywhere we go, that’s what we find. Just normal people. Easy pickings for every piece of worthless scum in the galaxy. Doesn’t matter if it’s slavers or pirates or some half-crazed demagogue with delusions of grandeur. They still have to be stopped.”

“Believe me, I get that,” Zaeed said with a wince. “I’m just still not sure how that makes it your problem.”

“Maybe it’s not. Maybe none of it is. But, still,” she paused. Her eyes met his, wide and deep, with a gentle plea that never failed to tug at something deep in his chest. “If we don’t help them, who will?”


	11. Kairos

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In rhetoric, _kairos_ is "a passing instant when an opening appears which must be driven through with force if success is to be achieved."  
>  \--E.C. White, _Kaironomia_ , P. 13

“If we don’t help them, who will?” Zaeed tipped his chair back and crossed his feet atop the dirty table. Several humans, turians, and one lone, ragged batarian eyed him with a jittery curiosity.

Zaeed lit a cigar and slowly drug it to his lips. Little drama never hurt.

“Raids are stepping up all across the Terminus. Now, you got humans spreading out like rabbits across the Traverse. No council. No police force. Just billions of poor sods foolish enough to settle in No Man’s Land in desperate need of protection.”

“You’ve gotta be fucking kidding me.” The big one, Brack. Had twenty or thirty years on Zaeed, at least a hundred pounds of muscle on Zaeed, and a red sand twitch to his eyes that made Zaeed more than a little wary. Brack jumped up, sending his chair skidding into a fall against the floor behind him.

“I missed a score for this meeting.” He glared viciously at the batarian beside him. “Tarak told me you had a reputation for getting the job done. Promised this was a chance at a big fucking payday. And it’s just a glorified advert for a shitty new private police force.” He took an angry, heavy step in Zaeed’s direction and leaned forward.

Then his brains splattered the table.

“That’s the problem with most mercs these days,” a newcomer drawled. “No imagination.” He holstered his gun, shoved Brack’s body off the table and righted Brack’s chair. Then he took the empty seat at the table.

Zaeed swiped a clot of flesh and bone from his pants with the back of his hand.

“Could have done without the mess,” Zaeed snorted. “Besides, he might have come ‘round. And you are?”

“Vido Santiago.” Dark hair. Dark beard to cover a smooth face. Younger than he was pretending to be. Zaeed certainly understood the use in that.

A flutter went through the group. Some of them had obviously heard the name. Zaeed wasn’t sure how the man had gotten wind of the meeting, but if he was smart enough to sniff it out for himself, he had potential.

Too goddamn quick to shoot for Zaeed’s taste. But damned if he’d let the others know he thought so. The appearance of weakness would spell certain death for his ambitions at this point, not to mention the possibility of certain death period.

“So, you’re telling me you’ve got more imagination than that one there?” Zaeed pointed his cigar at the dead man on the floor.

“Sure,” Santiago said. “What you’re talking about, it’s brilliant. It’s a miracle nobody’s seen it yet. Protection racket like that has limitless potential in places like this.”

“Not limitless,” Zaeed said. Always best to manage expectations early, in his experience. “Eventually, the council steps in, Alliance spreads their forces, and we lose our market. But by that time, we’ll have made so goddamn much money, none of us will care.”

“Well, when it comes to money, I’m your guy. I’ve been running numbers for Eclipse lieutenants for years.”

“If you’re so good, why aren’t you still with them?” The barefaced turian in the corner, Mestos. Explosives expert. Endlessly practical and surprisingly goddamned dependable, if his reputation held true.

“Limited development potential with Eclipse. For a human anyway,” Vido sneered. “But this? Starting at the ground floor? The sky’s the limit. I’m in.”

“Me too.” Blonde-haired human pilot, Vivienne. Quiet, but unflappable.

Mestos nodded. “We’ll need to bring in more. And we’ll need a ship.”

“I’ve got that covered,” Zaeed said. “Got the ship and stops planned on a dozen more planets to pick up some like-minded talented individuals.”

“So? You got a name for this outfit?” Mestos asked.

“Blue Suns,” Zaeed said. It had a ring to it. And Zaeed could admit, only to himself, a bit of additional meaning. The idea of bringing light into the darkness, a little hope in a barren sea of space, even if it was a twilight hope at best. Yeah. Blue Suns was good.

Vido tipped a head in the direction of the batarian and fingered his pistol. “What about this one? We just offed his buddy. Not exactly the best start.”

Mestos leaned his armored arms across the table in Tarak’s direction. “Not to mention, most of the raiders we’ll be killing will be batarians. You really want to bring a batarian in on something like this?”

“Suppose that all depends on how he sees himself,” Zaeed answered. “See, I picked Tarak here because he’s damn good at bounty runs. Turians, batarians, krogan—doesn’t matter to him. He’s got no love of slavers, and he does the job his team tells him to do.” Zaeed planted his feet on the floor and turned to the batarian. “So, Tarak. Everyone else here at this table is on the Blue Suns team. And the Blue Suns get the job done, even if that means killing your own kind now and then. What do you say?”

Tarak stared at his departed partner, blinking several times, then glanced at Vido’s gun. Goddamn if Zaeed would ever be able to read a batarian’s face. But he got his answer when the merc slowly nodded. “Yeah. If the money’s good, I’m in. Sign me up.”

No fool after all.

At Zaeed’s side, Andreas shifted. “Looks like we’re all on board, boss.”

She’d caught up with him about a year out from Canto. Told him she wanted to team up, if he’d have her. She’d left the service just as soon as her stint was up. Couldn’t stomach how the Alliance had hung him out to dry. Dishonorable discharge? If anything, he deserved a medal. Couldn’t stand the hypocrisy of a system like that.

Zaeed did nothing to disabuse her of her high-minded ideals at the time. He’d merely watched her, a tight pinch of something not unlike guilt in his chest, and welcomed her aboard.

***

Zaeed slipped up the side of the muddy, forested embankment. Four campfires spotted. Likely two more behind the high walls. Taking out the nest of pirates on Vatar wasn’t really worth the money, as Vido had reminded him a half dozen times. But it was worth its weight in gold in exposure.

The fact that Zaeed could finally put an end to Kathak Bremdor’s incessant raping and pillaging of the small farming communities spread across the planet definitely didn’t factor into Zaeed’s decision at all.

Definitely.

They needed a big victory, and they needed it fast, to spread word in the Traverse that they were protection worth hiring. Helping the relatively poor colony at a discount would only cement their reputations as trustworthy among the more skeptical buyers of the Traverse. Making it a hell of a lot easier to part them from their money. Good business. That’s all. A job worth doing.

Eventually, Vido had agreed.

Four days later, Zaeed was beginning to wish he’d listened to the cagey bastard. The pirate encampment was solid. Well-defended gun nest and well-equipped and organized troops. Zaeed’s people had made two separate runs at the walls with nothing but losses to show for it. Past time to take matters into his own hands, he’d ordered his men to hold their ground while he scouted the base for weaknesses. After a few hours, he’d found two vent shafts that could be exploited, long as they had the right distraction.

Then he saw her through his sights. Slip of a girl. Local. Making her way down the narrow trail toward the batarian camp. A shock of platinum hair fell from beneath a dark kerchief, and Zaeed was punched with an awful recognition.

He slipped from shadow to shadow, waiting for a curve in the path that would keep them both firmly out of sight. Then he tugged her into a stand of brush with him, locking her in place against his chest and muffling her words as she tried to cry out.

“Easy, there, Jayna. Not gonna hurt you. It’s me, Massani. What the hell do you think you were doing traipsing down there alone?”

Their camp girl. The village had offered her up willingly enough, and he’d been more than happy to pay her a fair wage. Someone to keep the cook fires going and clean the prefab bunks. No one touched her against her will. Raping meant death for any Blue Sun. Everyone knew it. No one pays for protection that’s worse than what they need protection from.

But if a man here or there slipped her a few chits and she disappeared for an hour or two, Zaeed turned a blind eye. Not his place to judge how a woman makes her money. Specially not when times were as lean as they were here.

She scrabbled at his forearms, panicked, and tried to speak wildly under his hand. Then he felt it. The bulge of not-quite-right under her clothes.

“What in god’s name?”

He let her go, began jerking her shrift away, tracing the wires and connections of a set of inter-locking grenades, connected to a tiny, well-made signal receiver.

“Captain Massani, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. Nobody—Nobody should see until I get there. Lotek made me swear,” she nattered, eyes wide. “You won’t let him go back on his word just because you caught me, will you? No-one can hide from Captain Massani. Everyone knows that. And Captain Massani always keeps his word. Everyone knows. They all say. I’ll go through with it. I swear I will. I’m not afraid. But please, please tell him he still has to pay.”

“Stop blathering, girl,” Zaeed barked, grabbing her shoulders roughly and gave her a shake. “What the hell did Lotek put you up to?”

“He took me while I was cleaning. He told me I could die there with him, or I go down to the camp and offer myself. When they let me in, the bombs—the bombs go off.”

“Fuck me.” He spit at the ground.

“I won’t back out. I’m not afraid,” she said again. Straightening her back.

“Obviously not,” he agreed.

“Five hundred credits a year,” she insisted. “For my family. He promised me, Captain Massani. You have to make him pay.”

“Just—just be quiet for a minute, yeah, will you?” Zaeed pinched the skin between his brows. “And stop calling me Captain.”

“You have a ship somewhere, they say. Nan said every man who has a ship is ‘Captain’.”

“Right. Right. Fine. Call me whatever the hell you want, then.” He gnawed the inside of his cheek. Goddamn Lotek. Quarian was always looking for an angle. Ruthless as sin, but funny as hell and well liked among the men. So, he was useful, despite his obvious combat weaknesses. And without him running their tech, they’d never take the compound, not without losing dozens more. If that happened, hell. His own people may turn.

God knew Bremdor could pay them more. The longer this played out, the more likely they were to realize it.

Jayna dared a step forward. “Captain,” she said quietly, but firm. “Five hundred credits a year. For my family.”

“Yeah. Yes, I heard. I won’t forget.” He flicked a hand toward her shrift. “Come here. Let me get a good look at that rig. Make sure he did it right, yeah?”

Zaeed ran his hands down the wires at her sides, poking and prodding, before leaning back and shoving his fists in his pockets.

“There, now.”

“It will work?”

“Right as rain, love. But, listen, slight change of plan. Don’t go all the way in the compound, no matter what they say. You get them to come outside to get you, you got it? Tell ‘em you’ve seen our secrets. Tell ‘em you’ll sell us out. But you make them open those goddamn doors. And if, for some reason, that bomb doesn’t kill you, then you get out and run like hell.”

“But the—”

“Your people will get their sodding credits. Captain Massani keeps his word, remember?”

***

“That crazy colony bitch! What does she think she’s doing?” Lotek yelled just as Zaeed made it to his vantage point above camp.

Below, the men mobilized for a strike.

“What’s this, then?” Zaeed asked, casual voice belying his hurried walk to Lotek’s position.

“Boss,” Andreas gasped, running up at first sight of him. “Lotek loaded Jayna up with a bomb and sent her out as bait. He’s sending in the strike team as soon as she gets close enough to blow the gate.”

“But she’s stalling outside, and the signal receiver won’t connect,” Lotek whined.

Zaeed swiped a grenade launcher from Lotek’s stash, hefted it over his shoulder and peered through his scope. “You stupid pillock. Don’t need a bomb if they open the gates. You just need really—” Zaeed sighted his mark, “—good aim.”

He fired. Perfect shot. Straight through the doors and in deep. In the scope, he caught the explosion billowing up from the center of the gun nest. And then, a flash of blonde hair. Running.

“Boss,” Lotek tried.

Zaeed stopped him with a raised palm. “Later,” he snarled. “I found weaknesses. That fire should keep them busy while we sneak through. Right now, we’ve got a goddamn colony to save.”

***

After they’d hung Bremdor’s head on a pike outside camp and Zaeed had personally handed out the celebratory booze, Andreas pulled Lotek to a campfire set aside from the party.

“Motherfucker,” she spat as she shoved him to a spot just in front of Zaeed. “You tried to kill her.”

“No,” Zaeed rounded on her. “You be quiet. I want to hear him say it,” he growled, advancing on the quarian. “I want to hear him tell me exactly why he suddenly ordered an assault when my very last command was to stay put and stay silent.”

Zaeed stared into Lotek’s blue-plated eyes. “Well? Did you not hear what I fucking said?”

“I heard it, but I thought—a distraction,” Lotek stammered as Zaeed took another steel-toed step.

“So, you didn’t understand it, then? That it? Not smart enough to keep up with the rest of the class?”

“I’m sorry. You’re right.”

“Oh, I know I am. But I’m curious to see what, exactly, you think I’m right about.” Zaeed tugged his blade from the sheath at his hip.

“I should have followed orders. I just, I thought it was a good idea. I thought—"

Zaeed drug the tip of the blade along the blue seams of Lotek’s suit. Slowly. Watched the quarian try to suppress a shiver of fear. “You thought what?”

“I thought you’d be proud of me,” he whispered.

Zaeed jerked back as though he’d been burned, and his arm fell limp at his side. Then he sheathed the knife and grabbed Lotek by the throat.

“Look at me. Look me in the eyes so you know it’s the truth. You ever do anything like that again, I’ll strip your seals off one by one and cover you in varren shit before you die. You understand me?”

“I won’t. I won’t. I’m sorry, boss,” he tried to hide a dual-toned tremor in his throat. “I mean it. Never again.”

“Every decision you make from now on, you run it through me or Andreas first. You don’t move a goddamn muscle without one of us signing off on it in blood.”

“Whatever you say,” he nodded.

“And one more thing. Jayna’s family. Seems to me five hundred credits was a low-ball offer. Her earning potential would’ve gone up now that the colony’s cleared of that batarian trash. I figure five thousand credits sounds a mite more fair. Docked from your pay. This year, and every year to follow. And every time you see that money come out, I want you to think about why. If you can't be trusted to keep your word, you're worthless to this outfit.”

“That’s—sure. Sure. Ok.”

“Now, get the hell out of my sight.”

The quarian nodded, then scrambled away from them, jogging back up the hill.

“I can’t believe you let him get away with a slap on the wrist.” Andreas tossed her hair in disgust. “He was trying to set off that fucking bomb. You know that, right? If she had just gone straight in like he told her to—.”

“What did you expect me to do, girl, put a bullet in his brain?”

“It’s a start.”

“What’s rule number one?”

“Zaeed—”

“Rule number one.”

“Get the job done,” she recited, bitterness wrapped around each slow word.

“That’s right.”

“It was wrong.”

“It was inefficient,” Zaeed corrected, suddenly unreasonably angry at the woman across from him and uncertain why. “He should never have involved civilians. They’re too unpredictable. Lucky she didn’t blow herself up before she even left our camp.”

Andreas eyes met his over the fire. “Killing camp girls. This what we do now, boss?”

Zaeed took in the onlookers, starting to loiter on the outskirts of the fire circle, desperately trying to listen in to the argument without looking like it. Hardened old mercs with no tolerance for failure and green as grass recruits itching for a chance to promote at the first sign of a weakness. He suddenly felt very young. Andreas had no clue. No fucking clue exactly how tenuous his hold on them stood this early in the game.

Zaeed spat into the nearest embers. “Just one girl.” He raised a finger. “One. You think it’s that much better to let Bremdor rape her home to death for another week while we sit on our thumbs and do nothing? While we lose money?” He glared through the smoke in her direction. “Lotek was trying to get the job done. He shouldn’t have done it against my orders, and he shouldn’t have tried such a bloody stupid plan. But you were the ranking officer here, not him. That means, it was on you to catch him and stop him, not me. And if you shut his plan down, then it was on you to come up with a better one. Wasn’t it?”

He met her eyes, but found he couldn’t hold them. Some lost shade of feeling he saw there curdled deep inside his gut.

After a moment that lasted an uncomfortable stretch too long, Andreas grimaced.

“Next time, you can be damned sure I will,” she muttered. Then she trudged off to her bunk, a weight of extra stiffness in her gait.

Zaeed watched her go, pretended not to notice as the loiterers slowly dispersed, leaving him. Alone, to bask in his newest victory in proud solitude. Sure. When the last of them had trailed away, Zaeed made the slow trip to his private bunk at the back of the camp and carefully locked the door behind him.

In the dim lantern light, he pulled the bomb’s small signal receiver from his pants pocket. He stuffed it into the trash compactor at the back of his room, pressed the button, and listened to the satisfying crunch as it was ground down. Then, he settled in for an uncomfortable night’s sleep.

***

Garrus set the rifle mod down a touch too hard on Zaeed’s weapon bench, rattling the rest of the equipment, and Zaeed glared over at him. Since Zaeed’s most recent off-the-books purchases, his quarters had become a vague de facto armory for the members of the crew that couldn’t stomach Jacob’s stiff self-righteousness and dull-as-dry-toast attitude. Generally, Zaeed didn’t mind the company. He especially enjoyed cleaning and modding weapons with Garrus. Generally.

Then again, generally Garrus was as even-keeled as they come.

“You gonna keep taking it out on that defenseless goddamn sniper rifle, or do you want to talk about it?”

“There’s nothing to talk about. The commander did what she thought was right. It’s not my place to question that,” Garrus said.

“Course.”

“She’s saved my life more times than I can count. I trust her judgment.”

“Whatever you say.”

“So, whether Sidonis deserved to die or not, I’m sure she had her reasons to stop me.”

“I know how you feel,” Zaeed answered simply. He passed a solvent to Garrus.

“You really don’t,” Garrus drawled, slapping the solvent down on the table.

“Didn’t let me get my revenge either, did she?” Zaeed cocked his head as he took in the larger turian.

“It was a completely different situation,” Garrus bristled, finally allowing his anger to breach the surface. “She stopped you because innocent lives were at stake. She had absolutely no good reason to stop me.”

“More than one type of innocence the commander cares about saving, I guess,” Zaeed sniffed.

“Sidonis? If you knew half the things he’d done—”

“Not talking about him. You know I’m not.” Zaeed gave Garrus a hard look, then returned his eyes to his own scope mod.

“I’m no innocent,” Garrus said, with a strange mix of petulance and regret.

“Not saying you haven’t been around, and I’m not saying you didn’t deserve that kill. God knows you did. But look at it from her side.” Zaeed set his pistol down and sat back. “Everything you do when you’re in charge, everything you let your people do, all the reasons you give for why you let them do it—or don’t let them do it. You’re sending a message about who you think they are, who you expect them to be. And we both know what happens when you send the wrong kind of message long enough. Don’t we?”

Garrus’s mandibles slackened.

"Not trying to get too personal. And I know I can’t speak for you. Just saying, I tried it my way. I know where it got me,” Zaeed said. “And, far as I’m concerned, her way’s better.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, the bad news is I'm realizing I can't keep to any pre-set posting schedule. Life stuff keeps getting in the way. But the good news is I took so long posting this chapter because I was using my writing time to work on other important chapters that come later down the line. So, subscribe and don't lose hope! I know where I'm going and have plans on how to get there.
> 
> Thanks, as always, to everyone reading. Letters on Leadership is, without a doubt at this point, the longest thing I've ever written. I've been really excited to play in this weird little quiet, but passionate, corner full of Zaeed lovers in the Mass Effect universe. I'm so grateful for the encouragement I've gotten along the way.


	12. Lapse

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “People are stupid. They will believe a lie because they want to believe it's true, or because they are afraid it might be true.”  
> ― Terry Goodkind, Wizard's First Rule

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I think this chapter toes the line between mature and explicit, so it's probably time for me to go ahead and bump up the rating.
> 
> WARNING: I'm going to mark this chapter dub/con in an abundance of caution since it involves sex, drugs, and biotics.

It's the YMIR that gets her. Well, doesn't exactly get her, of course. Takes more than one mech to knock her down. But the rocket crashes into the crate she's using for cover at full force, obliterating it in a thick fog of red before he can even yell her name. And in the heat of battle and exertion, she breathes in deep. Happens too fast to stop herself.

Times like this, he hates that she wears the visor. Leaves her too open, too exposed. But God forbid he say anything about it. King of the hypocrites, then. He understands the need to prize accuracy over protection, and even after getting shot in the face, he still feels like helmets just get in his goddamn way. 

He even thinks he understands the other part too, the one she doesn't talk about. Why, in the vids, she always wore the helmet _before_ but she almost never wears it now. He didn’t know her then. But he can imagine. The claustrophobia of clawing for breath where there's only stale metal, the sick betrayal of clothing turned coffin. So, he keeps his worries to himself. Miranda needles her enough about it for all of them anyway. Besides, this run was supposed to be easy.

The outpost had been running a skeleton crew, mostly automated, and the plan was simple. Clear the base, destroy the contraband, scan the data on their new drug development tech, and send it back to the Alliance. One more tiny strike against the Blue Suns. Oo-goddamn-rah. He and Shepard had moved into the main warehouse to take out the heavy machinery while Jack stayed behind to clear out any remaining resistance at the exit.

That's the problem with easy.

Like as not, it ends with unexpected. Like Shepard, dosed hard and heavy with a powerful, experimental new brand of red sand and flitting about in wonder while Zaeed clears the last of the mechs.

She's staring at him now, breathing thick. Her pupils are wide black tides that threaten to drag him deep, and she idly sends a blue wave in his direction, wrapping him tight.

"Jack, Shepard's been dosed with sand. Head back to the ship."

"Bullshit, Massani, I'm coming to you."

"Got this covered. We need you to make sure our path to the ship is clear."

"I know it is. Cause l already fucking killed everybody out here."

"Shepard's incapacitated, and I'm ordering you back to the goddamn ship."

"Make me."

"Damnit, girl. She's compromised, you get it? You coming just to have a look-see? You think Shepard wants to be your goddamn sideshow?" Maybe pricking her a tad too deep, using Jack's own history against her. A childhood of mirrored glass. But he's not above it. God knows the last thing he needs right now is two unhinged biotics in the same room. He waits to see if the gambit pays.

"Bite me," she says. But there's resignation in it, and he breathes a relieved sigh.

"EDI, get me the doc."

"Right away."

Chakwas's wary voice hits the comm. "Massani?"

"Shepard's been hit with red sand. New stuff. Packs a hell of a kick. And she took a mighty wallop of it. In fact, she’s still prancing about in it now."

He waits an interminable minute while Chakwas checks Shepard's suit readings. "Her vitals are elevated, but she doesn't appear to be experiencing any toxicity. It's a clean batch. Can you get her back to the ship?"

"No,” he huffs an irritated grunt. "Can't do much of anything right now. She's got me in stasis. Most of me, anyway."

"She's never been able to do that before," Chakwas says, and an irritated part of him squirms at the skepticism he hears twisting underneath. As if he hadn't earned a measure of faith at this point.

"Yeah, well, I guess a whole crate full of sand makes her a fast learner. Even if I get loose, we're gonna sit things out here. If I brought her back to the ship and she posed a danger to the crew, she'd never forgive me."

"Is she a danger to you?"

"Always."

"I'm serious."

"So am I. But right now, she's just watching me float an inch or so off the floor while she spins around the room like a bloody ballerina. Who knew all it took was an O.D. of the good stuff to get her to dance."

"She's in no immediate jeopardy," Chakwas says. "If she keeps using her biotics, she'll eventually purge it from her system, but there's no way to know how long that will take. In fact, it may be better if you come back to the ship yourself at the first opportunity."

"And leave her here alone? Not bloody likely."

He can almost hear the disapproval in her silence before Chakways sternly adds, "She's in a susceptible mental state."

"You don't say."

"Zaeed." Oh, it's first names now, is it? "She'll experience euphoria, over-confidence, and a significant increase in her biotic powers. Also—hyper sexuality and decreased inhibitions."

"I know goddamn well what the drug does. Probably better than you. And that's my goddamn point. Shepard's dangerous enough when she's not hopped up on biotic steroids. No way in hell I'm leaving her here unsupervised. She might hurt herself."

"Zaeed, I swear to you, if you take advantage—."

"I like you, doc," he interrupted. "So, I'm gonna do you a favor and forget you ever said those words to me. I've killed men for insinuating less."

"Zaeed, I'm—. Alright. Fine. I'll just—monitor her vitals from here. Keep me updated on any new developments."

"Will do."

Shepard rolls her shoulders back and peers up at him, mischief glowing in her smile. "God, I thought she'd never leave."

Dancing done, she closes in on him with purpose.

"Technically, she was never here."

"You know what I mean." She tips forward on her toes and whispers, too loud and too pert. "I'm high."

"You are, sweetheart."

The endearment rolls from his mouth, but he can't regret it. It feels good. Satisfying. Like popping the seals of his armor. It's a novel feeling, to speak an affection when he actually means it. Her sudden vulnerability seems to be tugging loose some of his own.

"I can do anything." 

Warrior Shepard says the words, but Ballerina Shepard adds a cute little twirl at the end for emphasis. 

"Damn near."

She starts to let the stasis field go slack, one sliver at a time, a sticky-fingered child reluctant to turn loose a treat. He feels the floor reach up to kiss his feet, but he can't quite move them yet.

"I can do things I've never done before."

Something else in her eyes, her voice, raises his hackles. The way she moves. A different type of danger shimmering underneath. She steps close as she traces a finger around the tattoo at his right bicep. Glove on skin, barely grazing his arm. Agonizingly, teasingly slow. Despite the remaining hold of the stasis field, he can feel his cock twitch.

He ignores it.

"I noticed. Never seen you try stasis before. Impressive."

"Not those things." She shakes her head and a lock of sweaty hair falls forward. He wants to touch it, brush it back for her.

"Oh?"

"I can do sexy things." A low-throated promise as she gazes up from under her lashes.

_Oh._

"Did your asari girlfriend ever--"

"No." He cuts her off with as much of a jerk of his head as he can manage. "That type of fine motor control? Nobody has it. It's a myth, love."

And he'll reflect, later, that this was his own goddamn fault, accidental though it was. Because the one sure way to make Shepard climb is to point her at a mountain and tell her it's too high.

"I told you. I can do anything."

And then, with a lick of her lips, she does.

"Christ."

Warm ripples thrum along his chest, his hips, his cock. He wasn't lying. It shouldn't be possible. A'rana was seasoned, well-trained, and one of the most accomplished biotics he'd ever met. But she'd never done this. Even the rare occasions they'd used sand. Never breached the barest surface of this. These pushing and pulling waves of pleasure skimming across his nerves, and he can't tell where his skin meets Shepard's mind because his body is molten tension and want and teasing electric shock, and so goddamn warm. 

"I told you I could do it." Her voice is mercilessly tender. "I can make you feel good. I want to. Let me make you feel good."

He groans deep in his chest. The weight of his codpiece against his thick length should be pain and discomfort, but it's a drunken bath of blue pleasure instead. God, he wants her. He’s not sure he’s ever wanted anything more. And beyond it all, above the liquid softness she's pressing against his flesh, it's the look on her face that does it. 

The joyful, savage _need_. Directed at him. Only him.

And he'll come if he doesn't do something right goddamn now. Come hard and fast without a single real touch, standing in full armor like a teen, like he'd never.

"Stop," he chokes. "Jesus Christ, woman, stop."

The sultry, predatory gaze she gives him does nothing to push back the tide of lust, but she powers down enough that he can move, maybe breathe, again, without losing himself. 

"How the fuck?" He stumbles forward, hands on knees, knocked off kilter from the sudden drop in touch and intensity.

"I'm an L5. And I'm commander 'goddamn' Shepard. And I told you, I can do anything I want."

"Yeah. Yeah. I believe you." He straightens to face her.

"You want me, don’t you?" she says, drawing back toward him, surefooted and sly. "You want this." She smiles softly.

And the sound coming from his throat is a dry, dazed grunt, but it’s not a “no.”

Then she licks a trail of buzzing blue heat up his thighs before engulfing his cock again.

He gasps. Like an ant caught in honey, trapped by the sweetest of deaths if he can't shake free. 

"Yeah, I do. You know it. God knows," he manages to rattle out. "But not like this. Shepard."

She narrows her too-black eyes, thoughtfully. After a long, still pause, she pulls back the field completely. He tries to straighten, can hardly move over the demands of the throbbing, aching _need_ that is his cock.

Then Shepard steps forward, closing the final gap between them, and nods as if she understands.

"I get it. You want this instead."

And if he thought the mass effect field was tantalizing, it's nothing compared to the heat of her pure, hungry kiss. Her armored hand clenches the back of his bare neck, then her lips are on his, panting breath and crude tongue in his mouth, and he's falling into the clean, electric taste of her. Her tongue strokes his, and he groans against it. He clasps her arm and the side of her armor, desperately wishing he could press his fingers into the flesh beneath.

It's a hundred dreams and fumbling with himself in the dark and everything he'd wanted except no, goddamn it, he doesn't want it like this.

"Stop," he growls into her lips, pulling away. He takes advantage of his freedom, grabs her wrists and tugs them down, uses them to create a small stubborn space between their bodies.

"Why?" She presses her lips together in a pout.

He wants to take that bottom lip between his teeth.

"Cause you wouldn't do this sober, that's why."

"Doesn't matter." She leans into him, armor clacking quietly together as their chests meet.

"It damn well does." He lifts her wrists, firmly, forcing her to take a step back. The space finally lets him breathe, lets him think.

"Besides, don't think you've shown me you can do anything just yet." He tilts her a cocky, if slightly battered, smile. 

"You wouldn't let me," she complains.

"No, love. What you did, that's just one thing. And you've more than proven yourself there, far as I'm concerned. But now, we've got ourselves a whole factory full of broken toys here just begging to be lifted, thrown, and shock-waved into oblivion. Why don't you cut loose, sweetheart. No holding back."

She frowns, straining to think through the muddled mess of her high. "You don't want me to be sexy?"

"Oh, love. Nothing sexier to me in this galaxy than watching you do what you were born to do."

She takes his confession in stride and shoots him a wide, proud smile.

"Then stand back and enjoy the show."

***

"You burned her out."

Shepard came to in pieces, picking out Chakwas's voice over the swelling, searing pain in her head. 

"Took for sodding ever, but Christ, you should have seen her. Goddamn glorious." 

Shepard felt warm arms loosen around her as Zaeed placed her in a bed. She couldn't remember the last time she'd felt so exhausted. She might have been dead. Her eyelids were solid bricks set in her skull.

"She gonna be alright, then?"

"Yes, she'll be fine. The cybernetics will filter most of it now. If she’s lucky, she may even dodge the hangover. She just needs hydration and rest."

Zaeed muttered something in acknowledgment. Their voices faded as they stepped further away.

And finally, Shepard slept.

When she woke, the headache had subsided to a dull roar centered around her amp port, and Chakwas was flipping through a datapad at her desk.

"Welcome back, Commander."

The voice brought her memories back full force.

"Crap."

"Yes. You’ve had a very eventful day," Chakwas said wryly.

"Zaeed?"

"I'll let him know you're awake and alright. I told him it might be best if he waited elsewhere and let you sleep in peace. Frankly, I think he was relieved. I'm not sure he was ready to see you again so soon. And I felt certain you wouldn't want to see him."

"Oh god," Shepard said as she rubbed at the tender port. Then she suddenly remembered the doctor’s words. _If you take advantage—._

"Zaeed didn't do anything, if that’s what you’re worried about," Shepard said quickly. "He was professional. I mean, he wanted, maybe, I don’t know—but, I was the one who—. I threw myself at him. All he did was try to keep me from making a fool of myself. He didn't do anything wrong."

"It’s alright. I know," Chakwas said.

Shepard eyed her keenly. "You were listening."

"I thought it prudent. EDI agreed. As it happened, it was unnecessary. And the two of you aren’t the only ones with something to be embarrassed about from all this. Zaeed Massani's never been anything but a respectful and reliable member of this crew. I'm afraid I let my prejudices get the better of me."

"I don't exactly think he'll hold it against you, doc."

"No, I don't either. That makes me feel worse, actually. He's a much better man than I gave him credit for."

"Yeah. I know.” Shepard gazed at the floor before lifting forlorn eyes up to Chakwas. “So how am I supposed to face him after this?"

The doctor walked over and laid a kind hand on her shoulder. "Well, I shouldn't expect you'll have to face it at all if you don't want to. 

"Of course, I have to. You think he's just gonna let this go? I'll never live it down."

"Shepard," Chakwas said slowly, meaningfully, "You were the one affected by the sand, not him."

"Your point?"

"Commander. What I mean is, anything you said or did this morning can be explained away easily enough. You'd be far from the first to blame a regret on intoxication."

“And if it wasn’t just the sand?”

Chakwas was undeterred. "Whether it was or it wasn't, you certainly have the option to pretend. That's an option Zaeed doesn't have. His words and actions stand bare. I’d say he’s in an infinitely more vulnerable position than you are, right now."

Chakwas patted her again before moving back to her desk. "So, whatever you plan to do, I advise you to do it gently.”

Shepard sighed and dropped her head. "Gentle isn't exactly my strong suit. I'm more of a charging through walls and headbutting my problems in the face kind of gal."

"You know, come to think of it, that might actually be a sort of foreplay for mercenaries."

"You've been talking to Garrus."

"I'm afraid revealing that would be a breach of my doctor/patient confidentiality."

"Cute," Shepard groaned. "Very cute."

***

"Shepard."

"Zaeed."

Shepard stood tentatively in his doorway and watched him fuss over his throwing knives. He fingered the blades one by one, testing for sharpness and humming quietly to himself.

"Glad to see you up and about."

Despite his words, he didn't look up. Shepard had spent a fitful night in her cabin, trying to get her Chakwas-prescribed rest, but she’d woken feeling more keyed up than before. She’d never been good at waiting. Any time she was confronted with a problem, she’d rush headlong at it, battering with all her might until it gave. The awkward shame she felt, the potential that what had happened yesterday might have irrevocably damaged her relationship with one of her closest companions, was a problem that clawed at her veins, demanding immediate action. She should be proud. She’d at least held out until mid-morning. 

But if she had thought the short period of breathing room would lessen her mortification in his presence, her first good look at Zaeed proved her the fool. His muscled forearms flexed under dark ink as he lounged in his casual fatigues. Shepard tried not to think of the way that tattoo had felt under her fingertips, the way his eyes had burned the first time she stroked him with biotics. A wild, loose, look of surrender. Tried not to think of how it felt to swallow his rough moan before he came back to himself and pushed her away. How had she ever thought she’d be able to face him without melting from the embarrassment? Or the heat, for that matter.

She’d told him she could make him feel good. Oh god. She’d actually said that. Out loud. And more, she’d been utterly certain, in the moment, that she could. That he wanted her to. Basking, elated that all her irritatingly stubborn self-doubt in that regard seemed to have evaporated. 

Now, it came back in force. She felt pressed between the wall of words that needed saying and the certainty that she couldn't find the right ones.

Shepard still wasn’t sure what to make of him. Of this. Of them. Which, obviously, they weren’t. A them. 

She couldn’t unravel it, and she hated problems she couldn’t unravel. Garrus had been right months ago, at least partially. She normally had no problem distinguishing when someone had romantic designs on her. She dug up their interest and gingerly plucked it out, as compassionately as she could, before it could sprout into something more. 

With Zaeed, though, every clue seemed just as easily explained away. After he’d comforted her, after Horizon, she’d been certain there was something. Maybe. His breath on her shoulder, his rough voice in her ear when he complimented her. She’d taken a chance when she’d kissed his cheek. A confession? An offer? Didn’t matter. He didn’t take it. He’d kissed her on the forehead, dry, soft lips brushed against her, tender and friendly, and he’d walked out fast. Just companionable comfort, after all. Nothing more.

Introspection had never been one of her strengths, but it had occurred to her, just as it had undoubtedly occurred to Garrus, why she didn’t trust herself to sort out what Zaeed felt about her when she could so easily see it in everyone else.

With everyone else, she could stay objective. 

With Zaeed, she couldn’t. 

Because she liked him.

Actually liked him. In the schoolyard crush, heart fluttering when he walked into a room, desperately wanting to run her fingers through his hair kind of way. She’d never felt anything similar before, hated that she was feeling it now, of all times. And it left her breathlessly hoping he liked her back, terrified that he might not.

Which shot her objectivity all to hell. Because the lies we’re most likely to believe are the things we want, and the things we fear. She was pretty sure she’d read that somewhere. 

So, whenever she was tempted to ascribe romantic meaning to the little things—the light brush of his fingers when he passed her a coffee, or the fierce look in his eyes when he scanned her body after a tough fight, Shepard relentlessly rooted out her own wishful thinking. 

Yesterday’s hope was harder to put down. That heated flush to his face. The feel of a steel hand gripping her arm, tugging her closer while she tasted his tongue. Yesterday was so much harder. Because whatever else she might have seen in his eyes when she’d touched him, the desire was unmistakable. And that meant—. Well, it meant something. Didn’t it?

At length, Zaeed glanced up at her. A quick glimpse out of cover to assess the field. Whatever he saw made him settle back against the wall with a familiar pronounced swagger.

"You know, this takes me back."

"Really." Shepard raised a skeptical eyebrow. 

"You ever seen a seven hundred pound krogan doped up on red sand?" 

"Can't say that I have," she said. She felt a small smile part her lips, relaxing a fraction despite herself. "Is the moral of this story going to end with you comparing me to a krogan? Because I’m not sure if it’s politically correct for me to be offended by that."

"You should know by now; none of my bloody stories have morals." He grinned at her, but she could see the anxiety pinching the corners around his eyes. “Besides,” he said, with forced mirth, “never had to kiss a krogan to calm him down before.”

Ah. 

She took in the wary, weathered look in his pinched mouth and examined it in light of her ruthless asceticism. A bid to save face. He had wanted her, for a moment, or his body had. But that didn’t mean he wanted her to know. Or that he wanted her now.

Desperate times had called for desperate measures, and he had just been playing along. Of course. It still made part of her hurt in some deep, strange way, that he should feel like he had to cover for it. That he’d be embarrassed about feeling any lust for her at all, even if it was only for a moment, nothing more than a natural biological reaction to her clumsy physical advances. 

And even if it was nothing personal. He was ashamed of it. And it stung. 

But she could put it aside. She owed him that. God knows she’d never pressure him for more than he wanted to give. Drug-induced indiscretions aside. 

Gentle, Chakwas said. Sure. Ok.

“You should have tried it,” Shepard told him, perching on her favorite crate and dragging up a playful smile. “I have it on good authority that krogan are fantastic kissers.”

“You would know,” he chuckled. And if his barked laugh sounded a little strained, Shepard pretended not to notice. And if her next jokes didn’t quite hit the mark, she felt relieved that at least he pretended right along with her.


	13. Margins

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Hell, maybe I should just buy a ship full of explosives and commit suicide by Omega. Easiest retirement plan I've come up with so far."  
> \--Excerpt from the Shadow Broker's Dossier on Zaeed Massani

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning for suicidal thoughts and angst in this chapter. Inspired by Zaeed's entry in the Shadow Broker Dossier, which I found surprisingly sad.
> 
> I meant this piece to come earlier, but I struggled with it for several months. 
> 
> Next update should bring a little light-hearted reprieve for our favorite couple.

The first time Zaeed saw Shepard, she lost him a job. 

She was just a lieutenant, then, not a commander. Grim as death, one eye patched, she lock-stepped out onto Arcturus Station only hours after Torfan. He toyed with his drink in a squalid little bar and wondered who’d leaked the security vid footage, how much they’d got paid, and how many admirals had secretly signed off on the final copy. Cause there was no way in hell this wasn’t sanctioned somewhere up the line. She looked too perfect. Cruel, and hard, and goddamned unstoppable, because that’s how the Alliance wanted her to look. That’s how they wanted every Alliance marine to look to anyone in the galaxy who thought humans were goddamn easy targets. 

Bet the woman herself didn’t sign on for it, though. Not the type to seek the limelight. Bitch like that could suck the breath out of the room by will alone, and she wrapped her fury around her like a sheet of ice. No way she considered this a win, no matter how the brass chose to spin it.

“Typical fucking human,” an asari with red markings seethed from a table behind his right shoulder. “Arrogant and careless.” 

Zaeed took another sip. Black coffee. He was on the clock waiting for his contact on an arms deal. Simple job. Hackett had hired him to move a shipment of guns from Tamaris to Illium. Quietly. 

“Useless pyjaks,” the freckle-faced purplish hued asari beside her added.

Quietly. Zaeed reminded himself. He swirled the drink in his cup and watched the oily brew coat the sides.

“Watch it. Even this heap has its share of pyjaks these days. Wouldn’t want to _offend_ anyone,” a third, taller one snarled in his direction.

They could call him pyjak a dozen times, a hundred, for the credits he’d earn off this job. Hell, he’d even buy ‘em a round when he was done. 

“I hear Tarvak’s offering good money for that bitch’s head. His brother was on that rock.” The fourth, dark green armor and a voice full of gravel leaned forward, slow with intent. “I also know where they’re shipping her out next.”

Before he’d given a moment’s thought to what he was doing and why, he’d pulled up the dock records. Perks of being owed the right favors by the right people, or right salarians, in this case. Manifests. Bills of lading. He thumbed down the list. Ship specs. Crew and passenger lists. There. The Sharaniah. An older model corvette re-specced for cargo transport. With some not so well-hidden weapons and defense upgrades. Zaeed snorted. May as well have had “pirates” hand-painted on the goddamn hull. Had to be theirs.

“How much?” Purple Freckles asked.

“Fifty thousand. Not like we’ll get a better score off this rock,” Green Armor answered.

Red Markings leaned in. “Plus, Alliance ships always have the best cargo.”

Decisions made, the asari settled up their tab and headed out.

Zaeed gave his chits to the barkeep and followed a respectable distance behind. Long time since he’d hijacked a ship. Might even be fun. 

And it would make Hackett mad as hell. 

Zaeed cracked his knuckles and laughed. 

***

The second time Zaeed saw Shepard, she lost him a friend.

“A round on me, to the Savior of the Citadel!” Marco shouted above the din in one of the fancier bars on Milgrom. Expensive. But Zaeed didn’t begrudge the celebration. They’d survived a mission in hell. Never hurts to bask a little in success. Remind yourself it’s good to be alive. Good for morale. 

Marco raised a glass high, spilling cold brown beer down the sides, and Zaeed lifted his own. A bit swept up by his buddy’s enthusiasm, in spite of himself. Every newsfeed in town was replaying the battle. She did it. She really fucking did it. Geth or Reapers or whatever the fuck it was, she’d actually taken them down. And taken that goddamn human-hating turian Spectre with them. The sight of her standing there in the aftermath, stiff and worn, but proud—well, maybe he’d buy the bar a round himself before the night was done. 

Zaeed was feeling the beginnings of a solid, comfortable buzz when he caught the flicker of movement from the corner of his eye. Saw Marco turning in slow motion, still laughing, as the gray-green salarian took a swing. He heard the tinny voice shouting, “This one’s for the Council,” then saw the blow land. 

And suddenly, the celebration was over. And his best friend was dead.

Just like that. Weren't even any weapons. Just an unexpected crack to the temple in just the wrong place, just the wrong way. And Marco fell.

A salarian, for Christ’s sake. Who the fuck gets killed by a salarian in hand to hand? In a bar on Milgrom? This wasn’t some Omega shithole dive.

They’d just fought through some of the roughest fourteen days of Zaeed’s life, side by side. The entire team had been killed. But not Marco. That boy was tough as nails. They’d split a loot big enough to live like kings. But he lay still on the floor with wide, open, brown eyes.

Zaeed killed the salarian with a swift knife to the throat, even as he dimly registered that he’d get Marco’s share of the take now. Wouldn’t even know where else to send it. Where to send the body, for that matter. Didn’t know Marco’s family; his background. If he had any. He knew the boy pulled to the left sometimes on long shots, and that he cheated at cards sometimes, but only if his opponents could stand to lose the cash, and that he played the harmonica in dark corners after lights out. Fucking harmonica. A real one. Who even had a harmonica anymore? But Zaeed didn’t have the slightest idea whether Marco had ever even had a place he called home. 

It occurred to him, some weeks later, that maybe Marco’d never really been his friend at all. Maybe he was just the only person in Zaeed’s life who’d even vaguely resembled a friend in a long goddamn time. After A’rana, Zaeed couldn't remember the last time he’d let anyone in close. Not that there were many before her, for that matter. Just a handful, with a finger or two left over. Regardless, to lose him over something so senseless. So foolish. 

It hurt. 

But not as bad as it should. 

Zaeed knew that. Losing your last friend in the goddamn galaxy and _not_ shedding a tear. Well, he was still sharp enough to know that said more about his own worth than it did about Marco's. And he wasn't fool enough to deny it. 

In the aftermath, he’d scoured the net for any scrap on Shepard and her fight with Saren that he could get. He wasn’t sure why he did it. Maybe a small brewing obsession with her. Or maybe it was more about the Spectre’s ignominious end. Word of the turian’s suicide had spread. Soldiers joked that of course the bastard would rather die than face a true Alliance marine. But Zaeed found himself almost sympathizing with Arterius, wondering what Shepard could have possibly said to turn him. 

Zaeed had some ideas. He could all too easily imagine that dread—that moment before the Spectre took his own life. That indescribable loss—staring back at the past and knowing that no matter what good you'd tried to do, or who you’d tried to help along the way, your ledger was well and truly cemented in the red. Too deep to ever claw your way out. Yeah. He had ideas.

When he got the news that the Great Commander Shepard had been spaced over Alchera, he wondered if she’d thought something similar before she was snuffed out. Probably not. Big goddamn heroes never worry about their legacies. Too busy out making them.

Zaeed thought about Jesse sitting in a foot locker on his ship. Wondered what he would feel when the day finally came for him.

And it hurt.

But not as bad as it should.

***

The third time Zaeed saw Shepard, she saved his life.

Months before, he’d been hunkered down in a piss poor excuse for a diner in the Verge, waiting for Hackett’s payment on his most recent unofficial assassination to come through when he got the word about Pak’tha. A next to nameless quarian. Just collateral damage of the Omega gang turf wars. Not even a blip on the radar in Omega’s crime blotter. Only reason Zaeed even found out about it was because he’d slipped a barkeep some coin now and then to keep him updated on people that interested him. 

Last trainee Zaeed had ever taken on. Terrible at tech, surprisingly, but fairly goddamn reliable with explosives, and swift bloody death with a sniper rifle. He’d wanted to be in some elite quarian marine force, and he’d spent every fleeting second of his pilgrimage earning the experience he’d need. They’d parted ways with a handshake nigh on two years ago. Hadn’t seen the man since then. Figured he’d be back in the Flotilla by now. Should’ve known. Men in their line of work never really go back home.

Burned to death by a fucking vorcha in some filthy tech den.

And the thing was, reading that message, it should have stung. Staring into a bottle of asari ale that wasn’t nearly goddamn empty enough, Zaeed wanted it to. Desperately. But it didn’t. Just echoed about in his head like a drop in an empty drum.

He’d heard about some turian named Archangel making a dent on Omega lately, making a name. And he’d thought, “That should be my fight,’ and, “If I were younger—.” But mostly he’d just thought, “It’s time to get out.” Should’ve got out after Marco. Whatever a man needs to keep him sane, keep him whole, he was losing it. Been losing it for a good long goddamn while.

Later that night, he’d wandered back to his room without seeing or thinking much. Found himself staring down the barrel, as he did too often these days, sitting in a cheap chair by a cheap table in a cheap hotel, fingering the trigger with the fervor he’d normally save for a warm woman. There’s a reason he keeps Jesse, after all. A reason he’s propped her up through the years, on life support. Not stable enough for the work. Not anymore. But stable enough to fire that one last perfect shot. Always there when he needs her.

But the night came and went, and in the morning, he’d tried to shake off the feeling of cowardice that had shuffled its way round his neck lately. And he’d tried to convince himself it was the resurgence of some deep-laden willpower that kept him from pulling the trigger and not the gut-twisting fear of waking up alive, half-blind with hot metal in his face. Again.

A house of cards propped up on the wobbly table of self-delusion. Still, for the base to hold, he had to keep fighting. So, he did. Out of spite. And stubbornness. And need, because he needed to pay the bills until he came up with a better plan. For years, he’d been treading water. Marking time without meaning. Not a death wish. Not exactly. But a healthy dose of “don’t give a damn if I do.”

Man in his position, type of work he does, couldn’t take missions without partners. Not many, anyway. Not successfully. But the partners he’d liked had all either died or betrayed him, and he was never sure which one was worse. He just knew he couldn’t take either anymore.

So, lately, he’d started taking missions with partners he didn’t like. Kindred spirits. The ones that wouldn’t much care if they fell out on some stranger’s battlefield as long as the stranger’s money spent. And neither did he. One job after another. A revolving door of faces and forces that bled him again and again into the same pit of uselessness.

Bring in a criminal, and he bribes his way free. Put down a dictator, Alliance sweeps in and replaces him with more of the goddamn same. Take out one group of slavers, and ten more spring up in their place. 

He’d saved a shipment of eighty kids bound for batarian space three weeks ago. Thing like that, used to make him feel good. Satisfied. But he’d felt nothing. 

Sometimes he thought the only reason he even kept up the hunt for Vido was just to see if killing the bastard would make him feel something again. Anything. Even hate. Maybe it would at least remind him he was alive. Maybe even make him want to stay that way. Worth a shot.

He was thinking on it, eating in a shitty little restaurant on a backwater planet, toying with the idea of pulling Jesse out of her case again, when the call came. Alone, as usual, using a knife to carve patterns in the table while Path’ka’s self-deprecating laugh, and A’rana’s soft moans, and the crack of a fist landing on Marco’s head wended through his memory. Interrupted by the distinctive omni-tool chime.

A communique. Encrypted attachment. Sender unknown. 

He’d always been too goddamn curious for his own good. He stalked back to his rented room and spent the next four days crouched over his tool before he finally deciphered it.

When he did, there was nothing to warn him. No flash of light or tinkling of bells or ominous peal of thunder to herald that his whole goddamn life was about to change. He’d just finished washing up after a piss. Sat down on the flimsy excuse for a mattress and picked up the tool for one last try. 

“There we are.”

Days of strained neck and sore fingers finally, blissfully, repaid. The encryption cracked. And the first file he opened was a picture of her broken, sleeping face, covered in tubes and wires and bright red modern miracles. A study in steel and velvet.

It’s impossible. It’s insane. And it doesn’t make the slightest goddamn bit of sense.

But it’s her. An inexplicable certainty that goes all the way down to the knit of his bones. 

And for the first time in a long time, he feels a flash of something sparking deep in his gut. Something. Not sure what. 

But it doesn’t matter. Because, by god, he feels.


	14. Note

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello, readers! I'm still alive. My husband and I wound up in a kind of sudden move/reno project. Like most good things, it's taken a lot of work. 
> 
> The good news is that I finally have a writing setup again (and a little more time now that most of the unboxing is done). 
> 
> The bad news is that this chapter, which was especially important to me, fell smack dab in the middle of all the craziness. 
> 
> Thank you all so much for your comments, likes and bookmarks. It means so much to me. And thanks for your patience while I hammered this out. I look forward to getting back to the chapters I was working on before the great migration. =)

“A thief, Shepard?” Zaeed held his fork in a thick grip as he pinned her eyes across the mess table. “Have you lost your damn mind?”

Shepard chuckled at him and slurped up a noodle before realizing his stern look didn’t budge. “Wait a minute. You’re actually serious?”

“As a goddamn heart attack.” He set his fork down on the table with a dull clang. “You can’t actually be considering bringing one on board.”

“She’s on the dossier,” Shepard said slowly, cocking her head to the side and still waiting for the punchline.

“She’s—a—thief,” he drawled, even slower. “Don’t give a damn if she’s on some superhero team-up checklist the Illusive Man drew up.”

“So far, it hasn’t exactly led me astray.” Shepard cast an appraising look at his mismatched eyes and pointed a finger at him from the side of her mug. “You do realize you were on that list, right?”

“Not certain that’s much of a recommendation, honestly. Wasn’t exactly in the best place when you took me on, if you remember.” 

Shepard shook her head. “I don’t get it. You were fine with Jack—”

“Every crew needs big guns. Can’t always be choosy about the packages they come in.”

“Grunt—”

“Big. Guns.”

“And Samara,” Shepard persisted.

“Beautiful woman, hard as diamonds, stuck like glue to her own moral code—who the fuck would turn that down?” he countered.

Shepard raised an eyebrow at that. “But this is where you draw your line? Really? Not Cerberus or the salarian scientist or the half-dead vigilante?”

“Cerberus foots the bills, every operation needs some brains, and Garrus was ready to take every gang boss on Omega down with him on his way out,” Zaeed countered.

“Alright. What about Thane? Last I heard, he was a ruthless assassin.” Shepard flicked a hand at Thane where he had settled beside Zaeed at the table. “No offense.”

“Only fools are offended by the truth, Siha.” Thane quirked a small grin.

“Good assassins kill for money,” Zaeed replied smoothly, “And professional pride. Predictable motives. And the best are reliable as clockwork. But thieves like this girl, they steal for the thrill. And that’s something you can’t predict. Whatever gets her rocks off, being aboard a ship, even your ship, won’t stop her, Shepard.” 

“Let’s say it doesn’t, then,” Shepard said. “What’s your worst-case scenario?” 

“Thieves shoot unit cohesion all to hell. Things go missing, people start turning on each other. Morale takes a nose-dive. But that’s not the worst of it.” Zaeed leaned forward with his forearms on the table. “If she runs out of knick-knacks, she’s liable to start stealing secrets. Like you said, you’ve put together a colorful crew here.” He waved a hand around the room. “Just how much damage you think someone could do with the right words in the wrong ear?”

Thane settled stiffly at that. “He may have a point, Siha. Are you certain that her aid is necessary?”

“It’s worth a try,” Shepard answered firmly. “She’s an infiltrator. We’re short in that department. We have to give her a shot.”

“She’ll have to be watched, you know,” Zaeed grumbled, not quite willing to let it die.

Shepard gave him a slightly teasing smile. “Then it’s a good thing I have you.”

***

Zaeed handed Kasumi the multimeter before she had to ask. They worked well together, despite his misgivings. He was man enough to admit that.

“You’re going to like me one day, you know.”

“Not goddamn likely.”

They sat side by side, crouched over the armory table. Stiff-lipped Jacob mercifully absent. Shepard had assigned them to improve the video feeds on the exo-suits. Apparently, no one on the ship knew more about surveillance than Zaeed and the little thief. Though he didn’t doubt the truth of it, he remained skeptical of Shepard’s motivations for wanting the system improved. Or at least the timing of it. It smacked of typical team-building tripe.

“I mean it,” Kasumi assured him. “We’re going to be the best of friends. I can already tell. I get feelings about these things.” She tossed him a perky wink.

“You’ll feel the back of my hand if you set one slippered toe in my room.”

“Come on, now. That’s a challenge. You’re smart. You should know better than that.” She finished testing the line, frowned at the reading, then handed the instrument back.

“It’s all well and good to joke. But you push too far one day, and she’ll set you out, sure as sunshine. And I’ll be there to watch.”

“I have a feeling I wouldn’t be the only person on this ship to cross an uncrossable line that Shep forgave them for.” She gave him a sweetly serious look from under her lashes before shining another jaunty smile his way. “It’s one of the things I like best about her.”

“Oh, so that’s it. You’re just here to take advantage.”

“No more than anyone else.” 

“She’s no pushover.”

“Of course not.” She sounded offended. “I wouldn’t have taken the job if she were.” 

Zaeed’s unimpressed grunt sat in the space between them.

Kasumi considered him a moment. “Well, even if you don’t like me yet, I like you.”

“Oh, yeah? And why is that?”

“Well, for one thing, you’re the only one who’s still a challenge. Did you know I’ve stolen the same bottle of turian brandy off Garrus three times in less than a week? Three times. I just keep putting it back before he knows it’s missing. It’s not even fun anymore.”

“What about Thane? He’s the suspicious type.”

“But he doesn’t have anything fun to steal,” she pouted. “He doesn’t need to keep mementos. They’re all in his head.” She picked up a piece of wiring for a helmet feed and waved it at him. “You, on the other hand, have all sorts of treasures. You’re the perfect combination of skeptic sentimentalism.”

“I catch you taking my things, you’ll find out my sentiment has its limits,” he said, lifting an irritated brow at her as he finally looked up from his work.

“See? Very dramatic. I like it. The game is afoot!” With a laugh and a brief bow, she vanished before his eyes.

***

Shepard exited the elevator in time to see Zaeed dragging Kasumi by the arm across the crew deck floor.

“Zaeed, what’s going on?”

He shoved the thief in front of her, cold flint in his eyes.

“She goes, or I go. Off this ship. Right goddamn now.”

“Kasumi,” Shepard growled, “Tell me you didn’t take Jesse.”

“Oh, please,” she sighed dramatically. “I do know where the limits are, you know.”

“Well, then?” Shepard waited. “What was it?”

“Yes, Zaeed. Tell her what I took.” Kasumi turned eagerly to face him, practically clicking her heels, and suddenly Zaeed’s eyes went wide. He ducked his head, all the fight gone out of him, and Shepard could swear a blush was forming at the tops of his ears as he gritted his teeth.

“Never mind," he grumbled. “I’ll handle it myself.”

“Whatever it is,” Shepard glared hard at Kasumi, “You give it back. Right now. And if you ever take anything else of his, you really are off the ship. You’ve been more than warned.”

“You got it, Shep.”

Shepard pulled Kasumi to face her with a firm hand on her shoulder and squeezed, just an ounce shy of painful, low Commander Shepard voice in full effect. 

“I mean it, Kasumi. Leave him be.”

Kasumi swallowed and nodded. “I understand. Really. You got it.”

Zaeed looked pointedly at the floor. Shepard eyed them both one long, last time before moving to the forward battery to finish her rounds.

Kasumi wheeled back to Zaeed as soon as Shepard was out of earshot, good humor largely returned.

“Step into my parlor,” she said, with a soft flourish toward her observation deck.

“Told her she never should’ve let a goddamn thief aboard.”

“You shouldn’t be so quick to cast stones,” she said over her shoulder as he followed her. “Word on the street is Shepard almost had to kill you.”

“Extenuating circumstances,” he muttered. But the flush on his ears hadn’t quite died down.

As soon as the door closed behind them, he held out his hand, stiff as steel. “The book. Hand it over.”

“Of course,” Kasumi said, rummaging through her things. “I didn’t know what it was when I took it, you know. It’s so rare to find a leather-bound book these days. And _real_ paper.” Her longing sigh stopped just short of a moan. “I was just going to read it and give it back.”

“Sure you were.” 

“I was!” She pulled the book from a shelf. “I didn’t know—well, I didn’t know it was personal.”

“But—when you found out. Didn’t stop you, did it?” His tone came out more broken than angry. Vulnerable. “You read it anyway.” 

"No,” she admitted. “It didn’t stop me. It was—It's beautiful, Zaeed. Really. Beautiful."

Zaeed's face flipped through a range of emotions before settling on disbelief. His whole body flinched, brittle enough to break. "Very funny. You've had your laugh. Give it over." His stiff hand still hung in the air between them. 

"I'm not laughing," she said gently. "It reminded me of someone. Someone important. It made me feel something. I'm sorry I took it, but I'm not sorry I read it. Beautiful things aren't meant to be locked away. Those are kind of the words I live by, actually."

She offered the book back toward him slowly, reluctantly. She watched his shoulders ease, a small fraction, watched his hands twitch, not quite a tremble, as he carefully took it.

"You don't mean that," he said, hoarse. "It's nothing. Just scribblings when I'm bored out of my skull. Helps me pass the time."

"No one else has ever read any of it?"

"No." A quick shake of the head and a shy grunt. "No."

"You should let her."

"What?" 

"You should let Shepard read them. Especially the ones you wrote for her. Poetry is a tried and true way to a girl's heart, after all."

"They're not—I didn't—." Zaeed pressed his features together and rubbed one hand over a haggard glare. 

"I've seen the way you look at her. And that last one, well," she fanned her face dramatically, "Talk about heat. You'd give Neruda a run for his money."

Zaeed let his mouth fall open to respond, snapped it closed, opened it again, but made only a vaguely flummoxed sound in the back of his throat.

Kasumi reached up and patted his cheek. "She likes you too, you know."

He couldn’t quite hide his interest as he leaned back on one foot, crossing his arms with the book pressed to his chest. "Yeah? And how the devil would you know that?"

"I've watched surveillance footage of your missions," she chirped. "Shep watches everyone in the field, of course, but she pays special attention to you." Kasumi leaned forward, and despite the fact that they were alone, she put a conspiratorial hand beside her face to cover her whisper. "Especially your a—."

"That's enough," he broke in sharply.

"I was going to say arms." Kasumi pouted prettily at him.

Zaeed settled his weight on his other foot and shook a disapproving head. "Christ, woman. Does privacy not mean anything to you?"

"It does, actually." Her mood shifted, quicksilver and solemn. "It means a lot. In certain circumstances. I know I haven't been the best at showing it. But I do like you. All of you. Especially Shepard." She peered up at him, determined. "That's why I'm going to give you a present."

"No, no, no. Only gift I need is for you to stay out of my goddamn business."

Kasumi's eyes glinted under the hood as if he hadn't spoken at all. "Don't worry. I promise I'll make it up to you. In fact, I know the perfect thing. Trust me."

"I don't," he insisted. "Not for one goddamn minute."

"You will," Kasumi said sweetly. "Cross my heart."

***

“Commander Shepard is requesting entry.” EDI’s voice cut through his reverie, and Zaeed carefully placed the book of poetry under his pillow. Out of sight. Out of mind. 

“Yeah.” He sat up on his cot, straightening his hair and casual clothes into some semblance of presentable. An uncomfortable habit he’d developed and determinedly committed himself to ignoring. “Yeah, let her in.”

When the door opened, Zaeed felt his fingers go boneless and stared.

“Hi.” Shepard fidgeted with the hem of her dress at the front of the room.

“Huh,” he breathed. Skintight black leather clung to her curves, framing her breasts before raising to a high collar. The skirt cut to damn near mid-thigh, showing the lean sweep of her legs. She balanced, a bit awkwardly, on strappy black heels. Christ.

“What—” He lifted a hand. Put it down on his knee. Tugged at his sweats in what he hoped was an inconspicuous move to adjust himself. “What—” he began again, helplessly. “You. Uh.” He passed his other hand across the back of his neck as he forced himself to stare at the floor, to draw loose air into his chest, deep and slow.

He heard the creak of the leather as Shepard shifted foot to foot again. Tried not to imagine how the fabric must be skimming across her hips to make that sound.

“Kasumi.” She answered the question he hadn’t quite asked, as if the name was enough. Then, the inexplicable happened. Shepard tittered. Commander Goddamn Shepard. Her voice cracked at the end of the high, nervous laugh. “I knew this was a bad idea,” she said sharply, deeply. “I should—go.”

“Wait.” Zaeed’s brain swam to catch up to his voice as he found himself standing and holding out a hand. “Wait. What’s—what’s all this then?”

“It’s nothing. It’s stupid,” she said, too fast. “I have to go undercover. Kasumi said there’d be dancing. That you knew how. She said maybe you could teach me.”

“Kasumi said—” he repeated, trying to wrap the pieces together in his mind. “And this?” He gestured, eyes running the full length of her body despite himself.

“She said I needed to practice in the outfit I’m going to wear. Makes it easier.”

“She picked it for you, then, did she?”

“How’d you guess?” At that, Shepard chuckled. A normal, honest-to-god Shepard laugh. And Zaeed joined in, the tension easing between them one breath at a time.

“Think the little thief may be growing on me after all,” he allowed.

“Does that mean you’ll help?” 

“Yeah, Shepard. I’ll help.” His eyes softened before he cleared his throat. The job. Right. “So, what type of shindig is this, exactly?”

“Hobnobbing with the rich and evil,” Shepard replied. “We’re infiltrating a party thrown by Donovan Hock.”

“He’s nasty business,” Zaeed tutted. “Won’t do you to get caught out.”

“Probably why I need lessons.”

“Just so.” He stalked toward her, uncomfortably aware that his arousal was probably visible, hoping his closer proximity would draw her sightline well above the waist. “And what type of dancing are we doing, here?” Any insinuation he tried to slip into the words fell flat, as he took in Shepard's flustered gaze.

“Waltz?” Shepard licked her lips and frowned. “I think she said waltz. Can you do that?”

He let the corner of his mouth slide up into what he hoped was a comforting smile. “Yeah, I can do that.” 

***

When Kasumi had suggested this, Shepard had laughed it off as absurd. Everyone knew she couldn’t dance. Not to mention that infiltration and Vanguards don’t mix. Besides, Shepard was more the “kill a few guards and smash through a window” type girl if it came to that. But wasn’t that why she’d recruited Kasumi in the first place? And Kasumi had been insistent that dancing may be necessary. And equally insistent that Zaeed was the right man for the job. How she’d come across that piece of information, Shepard wasn’t sure she wanted to know.

Shepard had balked again when presented with the dress. A study in sultry that was the last thing Shepard considered her style. But again, Kasumi had been relentless. 

And despite the dress not being anywhere near her usual comfort level and despite the automatic awkwardness from wearing anything resembling formal heels, Shepard was ultimately pleased with the figure gazing back at her from the mirror. Kasumi had flitted about the cabin, no doubt taking stock of Shepard’s paltry supply of trinkets to pilfer later, while Shepard absently wondered what their resident mercenary might think if he saw her like this.

Kasumi bounded over.

“Trust me, Shep. This one’s just right. You’ll knock him dead.”

“What?” Shepard asked, a blink too fast. “Who?”

“Hock, of course!” Kasumi said brightly. “Who did you think I meant?”

***

“Goddamnit, Shepard. Try to relax.”

“That’s what I’m doing. Isn’t that what I’m doing?”

“You’re strung stiffer than a krogan’s cock. You know the steps. Did fine on your own. Now, all we’ve gotta do is walk through them together, yeah?”

“It’s different. I’ve never really danced with a partner before.”

“It’s easier,” Zaeed insisted. “You don’t have to think as much. Just have to let someone else take the lead.”

“And what part of that is supposed to be easier for me?”

“That’s fair,” Zaeed allowed with a huffed laugh. He held out his hand again anyway. “Just, for one minute, just trust me. Alright?”

Shepard levelled him with a stare she usually reserved for shady senators and Skyllian Five. Not long after Shepard had entered his quarters, EDI informed them that Kasumi had graciously vacated her lounge if they needed room to practice. Kasumi had also taken the liberty, apparently, of providing them with her own personal song selection.

Shepard’s eyes glimmered in the softer lights of the lounge, and Zaeed forced himself to meet them. Patient. Not pushing. Still.

After a moment that felt far too silent and far too long, her firm look fell. 

No, fell was wrong. 

It didn’t slide from her face with smooth magnanimity. She shunted it away. A blast-door override. 

A deliberate openness in its place.

Zaeed tried not to visibly breathe his relief when she gave him a nervous twitch of a smile and placed her hand in his. 

God, how hard was it for her to just _be_ with someone?

Or. Maybe just too hard to be with him.

Had she ever seemed this hesitant to touch Garrus? Thane? The Cerberus lackey?

Stop. Later. Plenty of time for insecurity later. Now, he had a job to do.

He steeled his nerve as he looked down and stepped into her space. Willed himself calm. Willed her to feel it through the pulse of his skin as he set a careful hand on her hip. God, her hips. Just as firm as he’d dreamed. 

Later. That could be set aside too.

Zaeed straightened to meet her gaze and felt the subtle tremble in the fingers of Shepard’s left hand. He wondered at it. Not revulsion or rejection. Her grip was sure, but tremulous. And, when she insisted on looking anywhere but his eyes, he suddenly knew it for what it was. 

Fear.

But she had her hand in his anyway. He had asked her to trust him. And she was trying. God. She was trying. 

He felt the angle of his perspective shift a tilt shy of normal. Took in her flushed face. Her wide, dark eyes. 

Shepard licked her lips. Then she looked at his.

Scared. For the same reason he was. In that instant, he was willing to bet his life on it.

Hell, in a way, maybe that’s exactly what he was about to do.

He tightened his grip on her hip and pulled her in closer.

Shepard’s quick inhale wasn’t quite a gasp. “What are you doing?”

“Probably making a big goddamn mistake,” he murmured, close, so close to her mouth.

He opened his own face to her, then—tender, open, and terrified. 

He took his hand from her grasp and slipped his palm against her jaw. Tilted her chin up before pressing his lips firmly to hers. 

For one interminable instant, he felt the unbearable depth of his miscalculation—in the stone stillness of her lips, the breaths she didn’t take. But then the shock broke over her like a welcome tide. She gave one quiet moan into this mouth before she was wrapping her arms around him, reeling him in. Her lips, plush and welcoming.

And then he was folding his fingers into her hair, butter-soft warmth that flowed across his work-rough palms. She moved her body closer, and he made a desperate, choked sound at the feel of smooth leather rubbing across him, her chest against his.

The sound affected her, put a wild look in her eye that he had thought he’d only ever get to see the once, when she was high. Lust. And beautiful, filthy intent. She raked her nails along the side of his throat as he slid a hand down the side of her body, splayed it across her hip. She clung to him as she raised a leg against his thigh. 

God, her legs. Raw muscle high and tight against him. 

He pulled back from the kiss to groan into her throat, suddenly desperate to get closer, slide beneath her skin and feel veins throbbing against him. He licked at the cleft under her jaw and pushed forward just as Shepard tried to shift her weight to accommodate him, one unsteady heel slipping out from under her.

He had a heartbeat to register her wide eyes before they collapsed together to the floor, an off-kilter jumble of sinew and curve. 

Christ. He could crawl through the floor and die.

Then he felt Shepard’s wry laugh as she shoved him to the side. “God, we’re bad at this.”

Zaeed’s tortured groan folded itself into a chuckle. 

“Guess it’s been a while.”

Shepard rubbed a hand over her face, then peered over at him from between her fingers. “For me, or for you?”

“Both?” he hazarded.

“Look, maybe—”

“Commander Shepard, you are one hour from your destination.”

Shepard jumped to her feet as fast as her heels would allow at EDI’s sharp reminder, then reached a hand down to Zaeed with a lifted eyebrow.

He took it, trying to tamp down the desire that threatened to rekindle with even that benign press of flesh. 

“So." She quirked a devilish grin at him as he stood, then smoothed the fabric back down over her hips and said, “Later?”

“Yeah.” Zaeed nodded and shifted back on his heels with a swagger that he was certain was only about eighty percent feigned. “Talk later, Shepard.”

And. 

Well. 

Maybe the little thief wasn't so bad after all.


	15. Opened

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Angst. Shepard-heavy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for child abuse references.

Dancing or no, Hock never stood a chance.

Not that Zaeed ever had a doubt. Shepard always did what needed to be done.

Still, watching her debark, his hand pressed against the window to the cargo bay, Zaeed felt the impulse to run down and clasp her close, in front of God and everyone. Make a right fool of himself. Something about the mix of smoke-stained skin and the remnants of her sultry makeup made her look unusually vulnerable to him in the low-level night cycle lights. 

Or maybe Zaeed was just projecting. 

Only, he’d kissed her. And she’d kissed him back. And he had no idea what that meant or where it left them.

She’d kissed him back.

Goddamn terrifying.

And, like all his fears, he fully intended to confront it like a man. Eventually.

Now wasn’t the right time, of course. Just off a mission, she’d be filthy and exhausted. She'd probably like nothing better than to hit the showers and fall right to bed. And if she'd paused, held her head a bit stiffly before slapping the elevator button and stepping in, well, she hadn't actually looked his way, had she? 

Later wasn’t the right time, either. After a bad night’s sleep and a bland breakfast, Shepard had offered to show off her new prize pistol to an eager audience around the table. And Zaeed couldn’t exactly share a private moment in their makeshift cargo bay shooting range with Grunt, Garrus, and Samara gleefully tagging along.

Grunt and Garrus were gleeful, anyway. Any delight the asari may have felt was quickly tucked away under the veneer of “cautiously reserved,” where most of Samara’s deepest sentiments lived, near as Zaeed could tell.

Then came an emergency supply run to Illium. A brief pirate blockade break near the Verge. There were munitions stocks that weren’t going to organize themselves, and sparring with Grunt, and weapons modding with Vakarian, and keeping Jack in some semblance of “in line” by Shepard’s standards, and a half dozen other Very Good Reasons to not have a second of solitude spent alone with the ship’s captain. 

The problem was, as the days slowly mounded up on each other, his nerves only got worse. The more time they spent apart, the more the whole bloody incident seemed like a flitting, impossible trick of whim, and the more certain he felt that actually talking to Shepard about it would shine a light on it, burning out any hope for something more.

And though he’d never thought himself a coward, God help him, if it was a one-off, part of him didn’t really want to know. Wanted to hold on to this grey ‘between’ of potential as long and as tight as he possibly could.

So, tonight Zaeed sat alone in Kasumi’s lounge (couldn’t say where the little thief had gone to or what trouble she was making) for no other reason than because Zaeed knew at that moment, with utter certainty, that Shepard was making the nightly rounds on his floor. 

Then the door slid open, and a familiar face stepped in. 

More fool, him.

“You’re avoiding me.”

Shepard walked over with two mugs of hot chocolate, set one down in front of him at the bar, then folded herself into the stool beside him, tucking her knees up to her chest. She drew the mug close, breathed it in.

“I’m—“ Zaeed digested the keen glint of knowledge in her eyes and mentally amended his unspoken, “not,” to a heartfelt “sorry.”

"Don't be. Maybe I've been avoiding you too."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah. Not so good at this kind of thing, I guess."

"At what kind of thing?"

"Touché."

Which was no goddamn answer at all.

“You’ve made up your mind, then,” he made himself say, even as his stomach lurched, because he wasn’t all coward, after all. “You don’t want to go through with this.”

“What, exactly, is ‘this’?”

He felt the cut of her eyes in his direction. He took a long, warm sip of his drink then looked back.

“Whatever you want it to be.” He was trying for relaxed, nonchalant. But what came out sounded a mite more wanting, more choked than he’d hoped.

“It’s a bad idea,” she said, but she stared down at her mug and wouldn’t meet his eyes when she said it. 

And that wasn’t exactly a no.

“Care to at least tell me why?”

“Lots of reasons. I’m not actually sure I could explain it.”

"Well, worse comes to worst, we could always play hunt the thimble."

Shepard's brows scrunched together. 

"Is that some kind of archaic sexual euphemism?"

"Do you want it to be?"

She pursed her lips, but Zaeed saw a reflection of his own smirk curving at the edges.

Zaeed pressed on. "Just meant, I could start taking shots in the dark. You tell me how close I get to the target."

"Sounds more like a drinking game to me."

"If you'd like to turn this into truth or dare, I'm more than happy to oblige. Break out the whiskey, turn down the lights. But fair warning, if you don't pick truth, I'll have you running starkers through the galley before the night's out. You just say the word."

"I think I can manage to have an honest conversation with you at least once without the use of alcohol. Less chance for a hangover. Or unplanned exhibitionism, apparently."

"Alright. So. I pick a topic, and you answer best you can.”

“Sounds fair.”

“An easy one first, then—establish a baseline?"

"I’m pretty sure that is the officially sanctioned way to start any good interrogation, yes. Shoot."

“What’s your first name?”

Shepard shifted in her seat in an intentionally offhand way. “Jane.”

“Figure you must hate it,” he said.

“Why do you say that?”

“You never use it.”

“That’s true.”

***  
__

_“Jumpy Jane, Jumpy Jane, Jumpy Jane.”_

_The singing jangled at her from all sides while she clenched her fists and squeezed her eyes shut tight, and Jane didn't cry, and she didn’t move, and she stayed quiet, so quiet, and waited for them to go away._

_She would not yell. She would not fight back. She would not get into trouble._

_She would not. She was too smart for that._

_Robbie Kwan was the loudest._

_She hated Robbie Kwan. She knew she wasn't supposed to hate anyone, but she hated him with all her heart. Weeks ago, he had thrown his backpack in the dirt, right where she was sitting at recess, and it scared her. And she jumped. Just a little. Just that one time. But Robbie thought it was funny. And now, he did it all the time on purpose. He waited until Mrs. Garcia wasn't there or wasn’t paying attention, and he did anything he could to scare her. He threw rocks. He jumped out at her from behind bushes on the playground or from behind walls in the hallways. He would sneak up behind her when she wasn’t looking and yell loud noises at her._

_The loud noises were the worst._

_She hated loud noises. They always meant something bad._

_And Jane would jump, and Robbie would laugh. And then he started getting all the other boys to do it too. Then, some of the girls. And now Jane couldn't go anywhere or do anything without someone sneaking up on her, or poking at her, or yelling at her, or singing "Jumpy Jane" over and over and over again._

_But she couldn't fight back._

_She wasn't scared of Robbie Kwan. She thought, deep down, he was probably a big baby. She knew how to hit. And she thought she could probably hit him pretty hard. She was pretty sure she could even knock him down and pound his face right into the sidewalk. Sometimes, maybe lots of times, before she went to sleep at night, she planned it all out in her head. She thought about hitting him and hitting him until blood came out of his nose, and then he would cry and beg her to stop, and she would, but everyone would stand around Robbie Kwan then and laugh at him instead and sing stupid songs about his stupid name, and no one would ever laugh at her or call her Jumpy Jane, not ever again._

_But she couldn't do any of that._

_Because Robbie Kwan was a big baby. And if she hit him, he'd probably tell Mrs. Garcia. Then Mrs. Garcia would tell her parents._

_And Jane was too smart for that._

_Jane knew how to pick her battles._

__  
***

"Care to share why?"

"It brings back bad memories. My life changed for the better when Anderson took me in, and I was only ever ‘Shepard’ to him. That’s all I want to be."

“That’s it?”

“That’s the general picture.”

"Christ, it’s like pulling teeth with you.”

“What did you expect?” 

He thought the question was meant to be rhetorical, but it had a bite of genuine interest to it.

“No different, I suppose,” Zaeed admitted. “I know you keep everything that matters awfully close to the vest."

***

_“Thank you for bringing the homework over yourself. But John could have come by the classroom on his way home from work tomorrow. I told the principal yesterday that one of us would come get it.”_

_Shepard knew her mother wouldn’t want her listening, but she strained to hear through the bedroom wall anyway. The knock on the door and Ms. Caraway’s voice, gentle though it was, woke her from an anxious sleep._

_“It was no trouble at all. I was just passing by and figured it’d be a good chance to stop in and check up on Jane. How’s she feeling?”_

_“She’s really had a hard time this year,” Shepard’s mother answered. “Sick every time we turn around.”_

_“I’m so sorry. Any idea when she might be back to class?”_

_“No, the doctor isn’t sure yet. But she’ll catch up just as soon as she gets back. I promise. We’ll make sure of it.”_

_“Oh, I’m not worried about that,” Ms. Caraway said. Shepard could hear the smile in her voice, and it made her heart feel warm. “Jane’s always been smart. She’s a hard worker too. I’m sure she’ll catch up. Do you think I could go in and say hi? Some of the students made a card for her.”_

_“Oh, that’s so sweet.” She had on her very best people-person voice. “Here, I’ll take it. She’s asleep right now. Maybe you can see her some other time.”_

_“Alright. Well, please let her know we’re all thinking about her.”_

_“We sure will. Thanks again for bringing the work. I’ll see that she gets right to it.”_

_“It’s no hurry, like I said.”_

_They said their goodbyes, then Shepard heard her mother’s short, hard footfalls coming up the hallway._

_“Sava, she’s still in bed.” Shepard’s father’s steps were almost silent in comparison._

_“And it’s about time for her to get out of it,” Sava snapped._

_“She can’t walk yet.”_

_“She’ll walk if I tell her to.” Sava swirled through the open doorway, drew close and grabbed Shepard’s arm to pull her upright. Shepard’s leg burned in her make-shift splint, but she wouldn’t let herself wince. She thought the bone might set alright this time. Her father was always telling her how he was a field medic during First Contact, but she figured he’d had a whole lot more practice on her than on any of those soldiers in the marines._

_“Have you been talking to your teacher about us?”_

_“What? No.”_

_“She was just here. Said she wanted to see you.” Sava added more pressure to the hold she had on Shepard’s arm. “What kinds of things do you tell her about us?”_

_“Nothing. I barely talk to her at all.”_

_“She sounded funny. Like she was making an excuse to come over and look at you.”_

_“I promise. I never talk to her. Just what I have to for class. I don’t even like her. I just do my work.”_

_“Well, it looks like you’ve got plenty to catch up on.” Sava forcefully threw the datapad onto Shepard’s bed, then tossed a brightly colored rectangle into the trashcan in the corner._

_“I will,” Shepard promised. “I’ll have it all done before I go back.”_

_“If we decide to send you back at all.”_

_“What? What do you mean?”_

_“I don’t know about sending you there anymore. She’s nosy. She didn’t have any reason to go by our house. And I don’t like the way she looked at me.”_

_“I think her mom’s in the hospital. She probably just stopped here because it was on her way.”_

_“Really?”_

_“She told us her mom had Vargo’s Syndrome before I came home sick.”_

_Came home sick. Shepard could never talk about the real reasons she wasn’t at school. She could never say the words out loud, even to the person who caused them._

_Especially to the person who caused them._

_“What hospital?” Her mother wasn’t quite sold._

_“Athame’s Retreat?”_

_“Figures they’d go to one of those damn asari places. Who knows what those blue witches can do to you.”_

_“Yeah, I can’t believe Ms. Caraway trusts them,” Shepard spat viciously. “She’s so stupid.”_

_Saying the words left her stomach roiling with guilt, but Shepard managed to channel it into a look of disgust instead._

_Mrs. Caraway had told them in class that the asari had come to Mindoir even though the council forbid it because they knew the human colonists didn’t have enough doctors to survive. She said they were missionaries who were risking everything, their family names and their citizenship and even their lives just to help._

_And Shepard believed her. She believed just about everything Ms. Caraway said._

_But Shepard also knew better than to disagree with her mother. And she knew how to pretend. She could pretend to hate the aliens, she could even pretend to hate Ms. Caraway if she had to, just as long as they let her keep going back._

_Sava stared hard at Shepard before dropping her arm and pointing a sharp finger down at the datapad. “That all better be done by the time I come back. And done right.” Then she walked out, with John trailing meekly behind her._

_Shepard waited silently, waited hours, until she was absolutely certain they were both too high to wake up before she crawled out of bed and carefully, so quietly, limped to the corner._

_She fished the card out of the trash. A real card. Made of stiff, dry, thick paper. She was pretty sure her mom had already forgotten about it, but Jane couldn’t be too careful. She tore off a tiny piece. “We miss you!” in Ms. Caraway’s bright, bold pink script. She picked up her shoe, lifted the insole, and folded the small scrap of paper underneath._

_Shepard threw the rest of the card back in the trash can. If her mother remembered, if her mother looked for it, it would still be there._

_You could never be too careful._

 

***

"You hide things too, you know," Shepard said.

"Never said I didn’t. People can’t go for a weak spot unless they know it’s there."

"Like how much you want to save people?”

“When it’s not inconvenient. Sure. I’ll lend a hand. You consider that a weak spot?”

“It’s more than that. You want to help people just as much as I do, but you—."

"No. No.” Zaeed lifted a hand to cut her off. “Not as much as you. Not nearly. You'd give them everything. You’d let doing the right thing burn you right down to the ground."

"I'm not as good as you think I am."

***  
_  
Shepard was thirteen years old when Sarah Jessup got taken. Sarah and her family lived next door. Shepard had heard the rumors, that Sarah was different. Shepard’s parents would talk about it sometimes in their angry, blitzed out way. How they’d seen a blue glow coming from the Jessups’ back yard, and the little girl was probably another witch. It was a shame, since she was human. Not her fault that the damn asari did whatever they did to her. But every single one of those “biotics” ought to be taken out and shot. It’d be a kindness. It’d be a mercy to save them from whatever those blue freaks must have contaminated them with._

_Then one bright Saturday afternoon, the black truck came with the word “BAaT” on the side, and armed men dressed in black got out. They pulled Sarah out of the house, and when her father tried to fight them, one of the men punched him in the face and knocked him flat. Sarah's father risked his life to save her. It didn’t work. But he tried. Shepard wondered at that._

_The first time Shepard saw blue light creeping out over her fingertips, she was in the middle of an industrial mining quiz. Her breathing shortened, her vision narrowed, and for a minute, she thought she’d die, right there in the middle of fourth period._

_But Robbie Kwan, who wasn’t nearly as bad as he used to be, noticed and sent a message to her terminal._

_“It’s because of that shit they spilled outside the school a few years ago. Don’t tell anyone, and don’t let anyone see.”_

_When she looked over at him, his brown eyes were wary and sad. He sent one more message._

_“It happens to me too, sometimes.”_

_They never really talked about it, after. They had never talked much at all._

_But three weeks later, Robbie Kwan stopped coming to class._

_He never came back._

_Shepard had always been good at control, and she used it then like her life depended on it. From what she could tell, it probably did. Any time she felt the slightest blip or felt the energy deep inside her fighting to come out, Shepard boxed it up, hard. No slips. No accidents. No men in black uniforms._

_But then she started losing weight. Because no matter how strict or how careful she was, she couldn’t control her sleep. And she’d never been able to control the nightmares. They were a part of her life just as much as breathing. Only now, when she woke panting and jolting up in bed, a warm blue light surrounded her._

_“Barriers,” Anderson would explain to her, much later. “You were forming crude barriers in your sleep. You have no idea how much power that takes, how many calories, how much energy. Once you get the right help, you’re gonna do amazing things, Shepard.” Then he told the academy she was a late bloomer and had her enrolled in their biotics program. It was the first time the blue glow had felt like anything other than a curse._

_Shepard didn’t know any of that at thirteen. At thirteen, all Shepard knew was that she started waking up terrified, covered in blue, and no matter how fast she cut it off, it left her weak and hungry. Night by night, her body was eating itself._

_She couldn’t ask for more food than her mother gave her. She learned that lesson at five over a bowl of sour milk and stale cereal because her parents had been too high to go to the store._

_And she couldn’t exactly tell them why she needed more, either._

_So she lost weight until she became a shadow of herself._

_One night, when Shepard was alone and buried by biotics she didn’t understand, she laughed bitterly at it. Of all the things her parents had done to her on purpose, they might actually wind up killing her by accident._

_Then her laugh turned to iron. No. It wouldn’t happen._

_She’d made it this far. She couldn’t stop now._

_Whatever it took._

_At thirteen years old, Shepard decided to become a thief._

__  
***

“I’ve done a lot of things I’m not proud of,” Shepard went on.

"I never said you were a saint. But I think you set rules for yourself, and you try your damnedest to follow them. Which is more than most can say."

"’Try’ being the operative word."

"I can tell I’m not gonna win that argument. So I guess now’s as good a time as any to introduce the topic of concern, then."

"Has Garrus been coaching you in cop-talk? Did we really move past the rapport-building phase that fast?"

"I did actually know things before I ever set foot on this ship. You do know that, right? Especially about goddamn interrogations. Besides, I think the rapport-building phase started a good long while before you walked in tonight. Valiant effort at changing the subject. Didn't work. Still. It was a valiant effort. Points there.”

“Thanks.”

“You don't fraternize."

"No, I don't. Not in my chain of command. I never have."

***  
_  
"Got any big plans for Winter Break?" Cammie sat on her suitcase in a failing effort to squeeze in one last pair of shoes._

_"Not really.” Shepard’s duffle was already packed and stowed at the end of her bunk. “Probably just stay at Anderson's. He's still got his apartment in London. He'll be off world for most of it. But he said he'd at least try to make it back for Christmas."_

_"Oh, I'm sure he will."_

_"What?"_

_"Nothing."_

_"It's not nothing. That's a weird thing to say. And a weird way to say it." Shepard turned on her side in her bed and propped up on one arm._

_"It's no big deal, really. I mean, it's just not something I could ever see myself doing, that's all."_

_"Cammie, you're going home for Winter Break. You always go home for breaks. Everybody goes home."_

_"Not that part. The other part. Come on. You know what I mean. Don't you ever just get tired of it? Like, I don't care how nice the perks are. The price is just too high, you know."_

_"What the hell are you talking about?"_

_"Shepard. We've been roommates for two years. You don't have to hide it from me. I get it. Your whole planet basically just got blown up. You didn't exactly have a whole bunch of options. And here comes this big, strong, handsome Alliance marine just swooping in to save you. I'm not saying I don't get it. I just don't think I could do it if it were me, that's all."_

_"Wait a minute. You seriously actually think--"_

_"I don't think. I know. Shepard. Give it up. Everybody knows."_

_"They don't know shit. Anderson saved my life. He brought me here. He never--"_

_"So, what? This thirty-something year old career military man just randomly decides he wants to adopt a kid from the ass end of the galaxy and spend a butt-load of money sending her to private school? Oh, and she happens to be fifteen? And hot, in a really butch kind of way. I swear, Officer, I never touched her! Give me a break. I'm not an idiot, you know. You should probably stop treating me like one."_

_Shepard sat up stiffly._

_"Yeah. And you should probably get out before I lose my temper. Right the fuck now."_

_"Jeez. I told you, I'm not judging,” Cammie chattered on. “I just meant you don't have to keep trying to hide it. We're friends, Shepard. If you're ok with it, it's not my place to fuck it up for you. You can tell me whatever. I'm not gonna tell anybody. Not that it makes any difference anyway. Like I said, everybody already knows."_

_"You seriously--? You don't get it. He never did anything. He’s never asked for anything. He helped me. That’s all. Nothing's going on."_

_"Yeah, ok. Whatever. You're right; I'm gonna go take a walk or something. You do whatever you want. You want to fuck your way up the chain of command, you go for it. I'm not gonna stop you. But we're done. Ok? Don't expect me to stand here and pretend to be friends anymore while you lie right to my face. Some of us are still trying to earn our place around here the hard way."  
_

***

"I know you had options coming up through the ranks, and it’s not as frowned on as it used to be. So why didn’t you?"

"It's destructive. Just the rumor of fraternization, even if there’s nothing to it, less than nothing, it can ruin someone’s reputation. They'll have to fight off accusations of favoritism for the rest of their career. Doesn't matter what they do or how high they climb. Somebody will always be there to say they got it the easy way. That’s not a burden I’d hang on anyone if I could help it."

"Well, it's a good thing I don't have any goddamn Alliance career plans, then, isn't it?

"I'm serious."

"So am I. I'm a washed up old merc with a dishonorable discharge. You honestly sit there and think I give a damn about my reputation?"

"I think reputation is what you've built your entire life around." Shepard pressed in toward him, and Zaeed didn’t like the tense, sharp look in her eyes.

"Yeah, well, you got me there. But that's a different type of reputation, and you know it."

"I do. And I've thought a lot about that. Like maybe it's a reputation that would benefit from sleeping with an ex-N7 gone rogue."

"Don't you dare."

"It's never crossed your mind?"

"No, it goddamn well hasn't. And I ought to walk out the door just for you saying it. I told you, whatever happens with us, it stays between us. You believe that or you don't. But if you don't, then this conversation's over."

Shepard leaned back at that, took a shaky breath that was relieved in a way that insulted him more than comforted him. 

"I'm sorry."

"You damn well should be."

"It's been a problem, in the past. Not just the fraternization thing. I have a reputation, too. Several, actually. Most of the time, it’s fine. I’ll use whatever tool I’ve got to get the job done. But when it comes to being with someone—sometimes, it’s like I'm just somebody's mountain to climb."

***  
__

_“Ok. How do you want me?”_

_Jim? She was pretty sure he’d said his name was Jim. He was tall and broad-shouldered. Blonde hair and all muscle. And the moment she saw him in the bar, she knew he would do. Hot as hell, the same rank, and not stationed anywhere near her. Yeah. He would definitely do._

_He bought her a drink, then he took her to coffee, then he took her back to a perfectly non-descript, typical shore leave motel._

_Which led to them doing their level best to tear each others’ clothes off in the hall until they finally made it past the door and into his room._

_But now he kept her at arms’ length, staring expectantly._

_“Um. What do you mean?” Shepard asked._

_“You know. How do you want me? Whatever you want. Just tell me what to do.”_

_“What we were doing before was pretty damn good.”_

_“Sure. I just—now that we’re here, in private—we can do whatever you want.” He snapped his fingers with a grin and started walking into what Shepard was pretty sure must’ve been the bedroom. “I’ve got my cuffs here, I think.”_

_“Cuffs?”_

_Shepard stared dumbly._

_“Yeah, you know. If that’ll help get things moving.”_

_“I don’t—I—I’m really not sure we’re on the same page here. You whip out the handcuffs for every first date?” Shepard began tugging the hem of her top back down into place._

_Jim came back, eyes twinkling, silver cuffs dangling around a finger._

_“Well, I mean, not all of them. Just the ones like you,” he said._

_“Like me?” Shepard felt one corner of her mouth turn down._

_“Yeah.” He shrugged, finally starting to click to the shift in mood. “You’re—well, you know.”_

_“I don’t think I do.”_

_“I had a buddy that served with you in basic. Said you were a real hard-ass. You could give a drill instructor a run for his money. Then, there’s the scars. And I mean, everybody saw the vid after Torfan, and I just figured—”_

_The penny dropped._

_“You want it rough. That’s why you picked me.”_

_“Well, yeah.” Broad shoulders shrugged again. He turned on the charming grin that had won her over at the bar in the first place and sauntered closer, lowering his voice. “Don’t let the size fool you, Commander. Trust me. I know how to take orders.”_

_“That’s—look. I appreciate what you’re into. I really do. I just—that’s really not what I was looking for tonight.”_

_“What do you mean?”_

_Shepard could have crawled into a hole. “I just wanted to have a little fun, you know? Just normal fun.”_

_“So you’re saying I’m not normal?”_

_“No, you are! I mean, it is, for some people. Maybe even me, in the right circumstances, but this is—we don’t even know each other, and like I said, this just wasn’t what I was looking for.”_

_“So, you’ll do it, just not with me. That’s great. Turned down by the fucking Butcher of Torfan.”_

_Shepard’s spine hardened until she thought it would split her in half. “Don’t call me that.”_

_He shivered at the look in her eye, actually shivered, with lust, which just made the whole thing that much more embarrassing, though for him or for her, she wasn’t sure._

_“You want to punish me for it?”_

_“Hah. No. I really don’t. I should just—go.”_

_And she went._

__

***

“You’re not that, to me,” Zaeed said softly. “Not some notch on a headboard. That’s not what this would be.”

“I believe you.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.” Shepard swirled her mug and looked down into the bottom of it, though Zaeed was fairly sure it was empty by now. “I think I just needed to hear you say it.”

“I’ll say it as many bloody times as you like. I’m not exactly good at talking about what’s important, myself. But whatever we’re doing, whatever we do, I want it to be good—for you. Don’t want to make things harder. What we’re staring down the barrel of is hard enough as it is. But I think it’s worth trying. If you disagree, tell me now. Nothing changes, and no hurt feelings on either side.” Zaeed said it with conviction, even tried his very best to believe it. 

“Before you kissed me, did you mean it—when you said it was probably a mistake?”

So, maybe, just maybe, she’d been putting this off for the same reasons he had been. But Shepard was no coward either.

“It was only a mistake if it’s unwanted,” he said into the quiet. “Is it?” He raised his brows as he turned in the stool to face her. “Unwanted?”

Shepard set the mug down and unfolded from her chair. 

“No,” Shepard said firmly, a world of decision in her eyes. “It’s not unwanted.”

And then she did the goddamn unthinkable.

She kissed him again.


	16. Provisions

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Umm, this chapter is smut. Pretty sure I earn the rating here.  
> So, if that’s not your thing, you can totally skip this chapter with de minimis loss of plot advancement. Shepard and Zaeed hook up before the Relay. That pretty much covers it.  
> If this _is_ your thing, then I know it’s been a long time coming (ha), and I hope it was worth the wait.

Zaeed’s feet carried him forward through Shepard’s doorway, but his mind stubbornly paced back to ten minutes ago in the galley when he’d picked up the coffee. Was coffee alright? Maybe she wouldn’t want any artificial stimulants right before the battle. Maybe she wouldn’t want him there at all. She’d said—

Well. Once they’d learned the crew had been taken and Mordin and Miranda had set to work patching Joker up the best they could without the doc, Shepard had touched his arm. Touched him as if they were alone together in his quarters, or dancing again, and not standing beside a broken pilot in the depressing little medbay. She’d touched him in the corner while Joker slept and Mordin and Miranda argued over some inconsequential, or possibly monumental, aspect of Jokers’ treatment. And Shepard had said, “After—come up to my quarters. Before we go through the Relay. I’d like to see you. Ok?” 

He’d known what “after” meant. After the discussions, and the arguments, and the nay-saying from the soldier boy and the grandstanding from the cheerleader. After the battle-planning and last-minute repairs, the checking in, and the bulk of the work was done. Then maybe, just maybe, she’d take a minute for herself. And he could help her. 

But the work was never done, of course. Not really. Not with something like this. 

She was plugging away at the datapad on her desk in her cabin. Caught up. Maybe changed her mind. 

He stared resentfully down at the coffee. Should’ve brought something calming, maybe. Tea. Should’ve gone with tea. Idiot. Chamomile would work. He could slip out. Get something different. Did they even have tea on the Normandy? Had he ever seen anyone drink tea on the ship? Samara. Yeah. But that’d be asari tea, probably linton. And he didn’t know if Shepard would want—now that he thought about it, had he ever even seen Shepard drink—?

“Stop it.”

“Stop what?”

“I can hear your brain fidgeting from all the way over here. Is that coffee? Oh, thank God.” Shepard rose to meet him. “Give it.”

He watched her slide smoothly from her desk chair as she stood, then trailed his eyes up her black sweats to the hoodie that hung loose off her shoulders. Barest hint of the tops of her breasts above her white tank-top. God, she was perfect. 

Shepard stalked toward him, took the coffee and took a long draw of it, then sighed. 

“Thanks.” 

“S’nothing,” he mumbled. Coffee delivered. Uncertain whether he should leave.

Shepard pondered him and took another sip before taking a deep breath. “You didn’t come up here just to bring me coffee, did you?”

The shrewdness in her voice startled him, and he had trouble meeting her eyes. Christ, he felt like a teen. He’d bedded plenty of women with little more than a charming wink and a warm hand across a thigh. Where was that suave bastard when he needed him? Zaeed swallowed around the gravel in his throat. 

“Just—just wanted to see if you needed anything.”

“Like?” Shepard raised an eyebrow, and a genuine, tiny, dirty smile crossed her lips.

“Anything,” he breathed, like a swear. And he found a little bit of the old Zaeed as he braved a step forward, settled a hand into the curve just above her hip, and looked into her eyes. He took the coffee from her hands and gently set it on the desk.

“Coffee breath,” she warned.

“Don’t give a goddamn.”

He felt an electric buzz zipping from head to toe when he kissed her, but it wasn’t biotics this time. Just her. The thrill of really kissing her, having her respond so thoroughly, eagerly, saturated as it was with the illicit guilt of feeling so right even when the rest of the crew was still in danger. 

She made a short sound that smacked of relief and softened under the kiss, parting her lips. 

Zaeed licked into the opening she gave him, felt her tongue warm and wet, and began rubbing his palm up and down her hip.

Never. Never felt anything like her before.

They finally broke the kiss with shocked gasps, tilting their heads together in unspoken agreement.

Real. This was real. And going to happen. And he found himself thrilled and terrified in equal parts, certain that no matter how this went, he wasn’t ready for it. Figures it would take kissing Shepard, the possibility of bedding Shepard, to make him feel younger and more unprepared than a suicide mission could.

“God. You—” he breathed, still close to her lips. Then, “I didn’t bring anything.”

Shepard pulled back just enough for him to see the amused and tolerant quirk of her brow. As if he were adorable. As if he were really as young as he felt.

They were still close enough to wrench a warm feeling from him, his skin magnetically drawn to hers, but the intensity shifted to something else. Affection, Zaeed might say. Though he’d had little enough experience with that in this regard.

“Mordin,” Shepard started, then huffed a dry laugh. “He, uh, he and I had a talk. About the efficacy of Cerberus contraceptive implants. And how it might interest me to know that a particular member of our crew currently had no communicable diseases. It was—I’m not really sure enlightening would be the right word. But—”

Zaeed laughed softly. “Figures patient confidentiality would mean nothing to a salarian. Remind me later. Think I owe that red bastard a drink.”

“So noted.”

And then she was kissing him again, hard and strong, tongue in his mouth, and angling him back; helping him navigate the stairs while he pressed calloused hands to her shoulders, her hips, her waist. Everywhere he touched her felt like a gift. A matchstick. Set him further alight.

And Shepard was clasping him, drawing him toward her bed. God. Her bed. 

She pulled back from his lips to kiss down his jaw, and when she tongued down the line of the pulse at his throat and bit it, he groaned low and deep. 

She shot him a satisfied smile, and he used the moment to tug his shirt over his back and toss it to the side. 

The lights were still bright, and Zaeed felt suddenly hesitant. He knew Shepard had no scars, now. All healed, smooth, taut skin. He felt every inch of his own haggard, worn flesh under her gaze. But Shepard only gave him a small smile, admiring, before she lifted her hands, surprisingly soft, and traced lines across the tense muscles of his stomach with short nails. He gasped, and she took it as permission, trailed her thumbs along the hollow of his hips and toyed with the waistband of his sweats. 

Zaeed palmed the sides of her jaw and kissed her again, as deep and hot and desperate as his gut. He slid his tongue into her mouth and a hand along her side. He felt Shepard there, with him, desperate and panting all the same.

When they finally broke, he traced his thumb along the bottom curve of her breast, just below the nipple, content to watch her shiver. 

“Are you sure,” he heard himself saying as he stared at the tiny prickles of excitement on her skin— cursed himself for saying it. “With everything that’s—”

“Can we not? Talk?” Shepard interrupted.

Then she dropped to her knees before him.

And Zaeed found that he couldn’t anyway. Not one goddamn word. He looked down at her lean, eager face and nodded, mutely.

Shepard slid her hands up his thighs. He would have thought his prick couldn’t have been harder, that he’d reached a limit the second she’d licked into his mouth. But Shepard was nothing if not the eternal exception to every rule.

“Can I—?” Her fingers stopped at the top of his sweats, and his thighs shook. God, he felt weak. And light. So light.

Her eyes were dark, greedy, but there was something else there under the current. He recognized it. That prickle of anxiety breathing just below. Like she’d pushed a step too far. Unsure footing, then. Thank Christ it wasn’t just him.

“God, yes, please, suck it, yes,” he babbled, too swept up to be embarrassed by his unfiltered words or the urgent crack in his voice. He was begging. Begging already. And he felt a short spike of terror at it. He’d never begged for this before. Still, couldn’t stop himself.

It occurred to him, even thrumming with lust as he was, that he was being handled. She was using him, to not think, to not feel. Wasn’t like he didn’t understand it. He couldn’t count the times he’d given in to the desperate need to white out all the dark thoughts with warmth and touch and skin. And if he could give her something now to take the place of the black barrel they were staring down together, for even a moment, if he could give her anything at all—. Besides. Wasn’t exactly like he was getting the raw part of this deal. So maybe they were using each other. 

Then she grinned at him. And it was the smooth, sweet grin he was sometimes lucky enough to see when she lined up a perfect headshot on the battlefield and knew it. He felt damp leaking from the tip of his cock and closed his eyes, leaned his head back. 

Christ.

She hadn’t even touched him yet. 

He tried to swallow back the pounding of his heart and mostly failed. He felt her easing his sweats down, along with his boxers. He stepped out of them and felt the air of the cabin rush in against him. 

Don’t look. The sight of her there on her knees—. Right. Don’t look.

But then her breath brushed against his cock, and nothing could have stopped him. He reached out a trembling hand to touch her hair and brush it from her face, and she looked up at him with a glimmer of excitement and mischief he noticed all too rarely in her eyes. She was beautiful. More than that. Lovely. Maybe the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen. Had he ever thought she wasn’t? Fool.

“That’s—wow,” Shepard said, with wide eyes, as she stared at his glistening cock. “Jack would be so disappointed she missed out on this.”

“Don’t know what you’re on about,” Zaeed sniffed. “’S average.”

“You keep much better endowed company than I do if that’s true.”

“Krogans,” he shrugged down at her with a light smirk because, yes, this was all just pre-battle tension, normal. Just sex and comfort and jokes, and everything could still be completely and utterly normal between them—

And then she brushed her lips against the tip of his cock.

“Goddamn it.”

He closed his eyes again. The kiss was dry silk, chaste, until it wasn’t, and then she was lapping at him, pressing her lips around the thick head, and he knew he’d been wet, knew she could taste him, and he felt a full body shudder work through him with a groan.

“Mmm,” Shepard responded, as she slid further down, took him further in, sweet wet mouth, rolling her tongue against him, firm and slow.

He had one hand gentling her hair, the other twitching useless at his side. He had to touch some part of her, anchor himself, to remember she was real. This was real. Shepard was on her knees in her cabin doing her level best to swallow him whole. His breath came in harsh pants as he tried to hold onto any tiny thread of control.

“You don’t have to—” he started, as she struggled around his girth, but she pushed on and took another inch of him into her mouth, brushing him with her teeth and pulling a thick twitch from him. He grunted and jerked. 

She immediately stopped, chagrined. “Sorry,” she said, and wiped her mouth. He took in her plush lips, red, from sucking him, and he could die a happy man. And considering their current agenda, maybe that’d happen sooner, rather than later, but what the hell. It was a trade he could take.

“God, no. Don’t apologize for that. That wasn’t a flinch. That was—. I was close.” He shook his head and pulled her to her feet, then pressed his face into her shoulder, partly to be closer to her, and partly because he wasn’t sure what she’d see in his face if she looked too closely. “God, you’re—. I wanna taste you,” he murmured into her skin. “Can I—will you let me taste you?”

He felt Shepard nodding against him and heard her almost meekly answer, “Yeah. Yeah.”

He stared, wild-eyed, as Shepard started pulling off her clothes. There was no art to it, just a soldier’s clean efficiency, but it remained possibly the second hottest thing he’d ever seen, falling somewhere right after Shepard’s eyes just before she’d sucked his cock.

“You—” Zaeed cleared his throat. He stood there, naked in so many ways, drinking her in. Lean, flawless muscle, strength and purpose in every curve. Firm breasts and tense hands and dusky curls. He saw the hitch in her fingers, knew she was debating covering herself, then she pulled her shoulders back a touch firmer, denying herself. No, presenting herself. For him. 

She raised her brows in silent invitation and he followed. Of course, he followed. Always, with her. She sank back on the bed and settled with her feet on the floor. Propped herself up on her elbows to watch as he sank down in front of her. 

“Should have warned me about this floor. Made of goddamn diamonds.”

“Quality Cerberus engineering,” Shepard confirmed. 

And then she parted her legs, just so, and any worldly concerns he’d had fled. He moved between them and ran his hands from the inside of her ankles up the firm flesh of her calves. Her breath hitched as he passed higher, over her knees, to stroke the insides of her thighs with wide palms, before coming to rest at the outside near her hips, gripping her. She raised her legs higher to accommodate him, smooth muscle holding easily. Quality Cerberus engineering after all.

He dropped his lips to the inside of one thigh, then the next, teasing with his tongue, small licks of salt and Shepard, working his way closer to the goal. Zaeed could feel Shepard’s quiet breaths coming harsher, and for someone as exquisitely aware of her body and reactions as he’d lately grown to be, he counted every soft falter as a victory.

He pressed his thumbs to her outer lips, gently parting her, and gasped at the wetness he found.

“Christ, you’re dripping.”

He looked up, saw the nervousness back in her face, but it eased when she looked down at him, noticed whatever rank awe had surely slipped into the depths of his eyes.

He teased her folds with his thumbs, his tongue, before licking closer to the heart of her. Savoring her. And god, she was letting him. Her sharp, loud moan was a revelation, a reaction let slip of the agonizingly firm control she held over herself. The taste of her. She was slicker, warmer, better than he’d let himself dream. And he felt the hard, heavy ache of his prick bobbing between his thighs while he smoothly pressed a finger into her warmth.

He wasn’t certain. Even now, with her beginning to writhe beneath him, tight thighs clenching rhythmically at his shoulders, his neck, he wasn’t certain if this was how she’d wanted it. Maybe she’d hoped for a quick, rough fuck against the wall. Just enough to get the edge off, wear out that boundless, nervous energy until only a clear-headed relief remained. 

Like soldiers. 

Like strangers. 

And maybe he was fucking that right up. 

Still, he couldn’t stop himself. If this was what he could get, all he might get, he couldn’t help taking his time with it. It had been so long. So long since he’d been with anyone he’d remotely liked, much less respected. And he wasn’t certain if he’d ever been with anyone who had made him feel—well, the things he generally felt when he was near her. 

Best not to put too close an eye to it.

So, he started slow, slipping his finger deeper, in time with the steady licks of his tongue. Christ, she was tight. He added a second finger, stretched her, patiently, thoroughly, as she got impossibly wetter. 

Then, there. He felt the change in her as he hit just the right place, just the right rhythm. Her breathing shifted, her moans softened. Half the volume but twice the intensity, the urgency, as before. Up off her elbows now, as she curled over him, body tight as a bow. She fisted one hand in his short hair, nearly clawing at it, hard enough to hurt in a fast, sweet way. Zaeed felt her tension pulling at every muscle. He heard a low, ragged groan in the air around him, realized it was him. He was groaning for her, with her, wanting her release just as badly as his own.

And suddenly she was rocking, almost squealing, as she unfolded around him, twitching in glorious abandon, undone beneath his lips and tongue and hands. Her cries felt threaded directly to his cock, tugging him painfully with each surge, but he didn’t dare stop until she finally eased back, boneless, to the bed.

He pulled himself up, shaking, crawled onto the bed and laid on his back in the vicinity of her satisfied sprawl. Not touching, not in this king-sized plus monstrosity, but close enough to touch, if she wanted. 

Or maybe she wouldn’t. Maybe she’d be done. Edge officially worn down. Clarity achieved and back to work. And that was fine too. Painfully uncomfortable in some ways, but more satisfaction than he’d ever had in others. He’d find his way back to his bunk and bring himself off knowing he’d at least had her scent, her taste. He’d known the pleased, high, desperate sounds above him as he’d actually made her come. 

Yeah, all things considered, that would do. He closed his eyes and took a deep, calming breath.

Then he felt the back of Shepard’s hand as she dropped it against his waist.

“That—” she trailed off, brushed her knuckles back and forth over his ribs. “Mmm.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah,” she murmured. She rolled toward him, propped her head on one hand and started drawing absent lines over his chest with the other. “I want you inside me.” 

Whispered. 

Like a secret. 

A confession.

“God, yes.”

Then she was straddling him, sly grin as she rubbed her wetness up and down the length of him. Zaeed choked on the groan in his chest as he leaned up and got a hand around her neck to pull her down to kiss him. A half heartbeat too late, he thought maybe he shouldn’t have, considering what he’d just done. Some women would be put off, and maybe she—but then she was tasting herself, licking herself off his lips and his teeth and his tongue, and he felt blood surging from the root to the tip of his cock.

He ached. Every inch of him ached for her.

She propped back and gripped him, lined him up, taking pity as she slowly began to take him inside her.

“Gorgeous. You’re gorgeous,” he panted. She was warm, buttery velvet, wrapping him safe, and so tight. So good. He grunted with each inch she took, wanting to stop the words from flowing out of him. Wanting to never stop. “So perfect. No idea how long I’ve wanted this. Wanted you like this. You’re perfect. You’ve no idea.”

Shepard’s high little gasps as he relaxed around him matched the sweet shock in her face. “God, you’re good,” she answered. “So good.”

She sank down to the base of him, ground against him hard and deep, then stilled, adjusting. 

Zaeed was grateful for the reprieve. He wouldn’t last. Couldn’t last. How could he? With her sex-mussed hair and sparkling eyes over him, his whole self sheathed inside her. And again, he was struck dumb. Never felt anything like this before. Never wanted a woman more. Touching molten gold, hoping he’d melt with it. Dying to melt inside her.

And he wasn’t sure how many of his thoughts were coming out in words, but Shepard was moving over him now, slowly working up a pace, plunging him deep again and again. Buried and raised in newness of life. Zaeed felt each slick friction tugging his heart from his chest, tightening his balls, and making a keen form somewhere in the back of his throat, or in the back of his mind. He wasn’t sure anymore. 

He heard the filthy slide of her slickness against his, and it almost drowned out his broken whispers. His small pleas. “Don’t stop. Don’t stop. God, don’t want this to ever end. Wanna stay in you forever. Be with you. Anything. Please don’t stop.” Pillow talk, she’d understand. When this was all said and done, she wouldn’t hold him to it.

He wanted her to hold him to it.

Zaeed sat up, pulled her to him to hide his face in her breasts, licking and sucking the tender nubs of her nipples while she rolled in his lap. “Yes,” Shepard grunted at him as she adjusted her angle. “Fuck, yes.”

His hands found her thighs, her hips, the swell of her cheeks as he guided her firmer and faster against him. “That’s it, love. Ride me like you mean it.”

Shepard tipped her head back at that, and the surrender in her beautiful, bared throat, the flush on her breasts and sweat in her hair was too much. 

All of it, everything, suddenly and overwhelmingly too much. He felt the string of his arousal, high and tight, and breaking open.

“I can’t—Shepard. Wait. I’m gonna—”

“Yes.” An order. A command he was helpless to follow as Shepard met his eyes and stared him down with a wicked, dangerous smile. Zaeed felt his eyes roll back as she rode him into a small death. The waves took him hard as he surged inside her, whimpered, gave himself over and filled her with all he had to give. He gasped out the last breaths of his climax, then let his head fall to her shoulder a moment in a dizzy, fond lethargy.

When he came back to himself, he relaxed the iron hold he’d had on Shepard’s hips. 

Bruises there, tomorrow. Hopefully they’d be the worst ones.

Don’t. Don’t think about it now.

He lifted his gaze and was met with Shepard’s pleased look. Contentment in the relaxed lines of her jaw, her soft lips. Zaeed felt a gratified peace warm his bones at that look. She picked herself up and left for a moment. He heard the basin running. When she returned, she tossed him a damp cloth, and he set to cleaning up.

A relentless beat of “what now” threatened to break through the tide of lazy satisfaction in his brain, but then Shepard was setting the covers back, making room for him, and he saw the curious hesitation in her movements that spoke of her own self-doubt. He tossed the cloth to the floor, lay back against the pillows and opened an arm for her. Shepard nodded her head in an almost workmanlike display of thanks, then climbed in beside him, resting her head against his chest as he pulled her closer. They could rest. If only for a few moments, they could—

“Commander Shepard, we are currently forty-nine minutes from the Omega 4 Relay.”

“EDI, I asked you to let me know when we were an hour out.”

“That is correct.” A brief pause. “I thought it prudent to wait.”

Zaeed laughed. “Think I’m gonna like this whole unshackled bit.” He looked up the ceiling. “You know, EDI, I take back every bad thing I ever said about you.”

“And I, you, Mr. Massani.”

“Funny,” Shepard said. “Very funny. You two should take this act on the road.”

Shepard shook her head, bemused, as the two of them stood and collected their clothes. They pulled their professionalism back into place along with the fabric, straightening seams and stiffening faces.

As they prepared to leave the cabin, Zaeed debated speaking but found no proper words. Gratitude felt wholly inadequate, and now wasn’t exactly the best time to talk about what had happened (his whole world had turned on its ear), how fantastic it was (best he’d ever had), and whether or not it would ever happen again (please, god, yes, and as often as humanly possible, ta). So. Better not to open that conversational door at all.

Someone with more experience in the romance department, or maybe just more experience in the Shepard department, might know a proper pep talk for her at this point, considering the whole suicide aspect of what they were about to embark on. But it seemed a bit insulting to even imply Shepard would need one, at this point. She’d done her homework, and he trusted her to get the job done. Whether all of them lived or not had always been up for grabs. He had no pretty lies to sell her on that score. But he trusted her to get the job done. And he felt that after everything that had happened since Zorya, she probably finally trusted him to do the same. And that felt like enough.

He nodded at her, sharp and professional, and she returned it in kind, then turned to leave.

“Damn shame I didn’t get to try out that big shower of yours,” he tutted, staring in slow, exaggerated regret as he followed Shepard to the doorway.

“Well, there’s always later,” Shepard tossed back as she stepped out of the cabin and into the elevator ahead of him.

Zaeed bit his lip to hold back the giddy dawn that threatened to break out over his face.

“Later,” he agreed, with what he very much hoped was some semblance of suave. “Sounds good.”  


He caught Shepard’s furtive smile as he entered the elevator and stood tall beside her.

The Reapers didn’t stand a goddamn chance.


	17. STATUS UPDATE on Chapter 17

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> My computer crashed. Chapter 17 is still on the way.

Hey guys. Please forgive me for the long delay between chapter posts. My computer got a virus over the holidays, and I lost everything that wasn't backed up somewhere else. Specifically, I had written about seventy-five percent of Chapter 17 and half of Chapter 18, and I lost them both. I was waiting to see if my husband could salvage them because I was desperately hoping I wouldn't have to start from scratch. But he told me this weekend that there's still no decryption for whatever virus I had. 

It's my own fault for not backing things up properly. But it was still a tough blow. 

I debated whether to post this update. I hated to get anyone's hopes up that a new chapter was being posted, but I also know that I always get a little heartbroken when a fic goes a long time between posts and I start to worry that the author has given up on it.

I've been overwhelmed by the positive support I've gotten on this fic, so I wanted to make sure you guys know that I'm still here. I know where I'm going, I still have some drafts for later chapters that were saved elsewhere, and I'm dedicated to completing all 26 chapters. 

I'm going to start re-writing what I've lost now. I'm hoping I'll have Chapter 17 finished in the next couple of weeks. When I finish, I'll delete this update and post it here. 

Thank you all so much for your subscriptions, kudos, bookmarks, and kind words. This fic has really been a joy to write.


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